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EVO ESPN2 numbers are in

Jynks

some heroes are born, some made, some wondrous
Unpopular Opinion: EVO should never do something like this again,
Not only unpopular.. but completely incorrect in my eyes.

This was a 1st time event for ESPN... the audience is there and will grow.. better advertising, and viewer understanding of the event will be a thing for next time. Stopping now would be a huge mistake.
 

Undergroundepict

I am like the blue rose
SPIKE TV would be good.

I don't know if G4 TV is still a thing, but that would probably also be a good channel.

I think that Viceland would probably be perfect for it. Spike TV comes with deeply ingrained stigmas and preconceptions working against it, and G4 represents the 14 people in the world who don't receive all of their gaming news from the internet.


I don't really watch Viceland, but from what I understand the network is entirely devoted to new shit, and the presentation of old shit in novel ways. Seems to be exactly what esports needs.
 

colby4898

Special Forces Sonya Up-player
I mean everyone know they make GOT it s pretty easy to see what kind of channel they are from there
I didn't know HBO did Game of Thrones though. I've never seen it.
And not necessarily. It could be a TV show that just plays dramas. Or it could be like ITV over here in England (which of course if you haven't heard of that is completely and utterly ridiculous :DOGE) which shows dramas, news, sport, comedy, reality, soaps etc.
Tbh I never really thought about it anyway, cos I'm not interested in american TV channels :p
 
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Compbros

Man of Tomorrow
Heroes of the Dorm which is simply College kids playing Heroes of the Storm for a free ride through College got half as many viewers as the top 8 of the number one fighting game during the number one fighting game tournament on the same channel. What are the Madden Championship numbers because that returns yearly so it'll show where expectations for something like this is.
 

Daemantalo

Not Good Enough
Not only unpopular.. but completely incorrect in my eyes.

This was a 1st time event for ESPN... the audience is there and will grow.. better advertising, and viewer understanding of the event will be a thing for next time. Stopping now would be a huge mistake.
Okay. We'll see then next year. However, with Twitch being the primary medium for ALL FGC majors, minors, and weeklies, you can bet they hurt the ESPN2 viewership number. Personally, if we see the viewership and tournament attendance rise next year, you can definitely say, "told you so, Daemantalo, you fkin idiot," and I'll have to hold that like A-List Johnny Cage pressure. Till then, I really believe that Twitch and maybe another channel as opposed to ESPN2 is the better option for both making money and bringing attention to the scene.
 
Worldwide viewers over 500k is bad? Come on dude, I remember having to fucking go to an arcade and play/watch matches in the late 90s. Smh that people see Evo on ESPN and go "well they only had as many viewers(on ESPN not total) as a wnba game, they're fucked". This is kinda weak showing, but it's still the best any FGC event has ever done as far as I know.
 
Worldwide viewers over 500k is bad? Come on dude, I remember having to fucking go to an arcade and play/watch matches in the late 90s. Smh that people see Evo on ESPN and go "well they only had as many viewers(on ESPN not total) as a wnba game, they're fucked". This is kinda weak showing, but it's still the best any FGC event has ever done as far as I know.
I asked the same question earlier, those numbers on an event that was watched ALONGSIDE twitch, on primetime tv, on a Sunday, on a PAID tv sports channel, without any promo if any? Those are almost fudgin majestic numbers if you ask me!
 
I asked the same question earlier, those numbers on an event that was watched ALONGSIDE twitch, on primetime tv, on a Sunday, on a PAID tv sports channel, without any promo if any? Those are almost fudgin majestic numbers if you ask me!
i think these people forget where the FGC was 5 or 10 years ago. That or it's a salty ill conceived shot at SF. I'm leaning towards the second.
 

Daemantalo

Not Good Enough
i think these people forget where the FGC was 5 or 10 years ago. That or it's a salty ill conceived shot at SF. I'm leaning towards the second.
No one is taking a salty shot at SFV though. The thing is, if your scene is going to be represented via a TV channel that requires cable to have and caters to a demographic that hates video games and praises athletes, you better be damn sure the production and matches are diverse and hype. When you've got people on social media talking shit about your game because they wanted to watch something else related to sports, then yeah, it's bad publicity, regardless of what game you're playing.

While I don't think we can dismiss the somewhat high number of viewership, I do think that most people were probably turned off by the fact that non-Americans were mostly present throughout top 8 of EVO. I really don't see a case being made where someone in Japan would give a shit about an American sports channel and would much rather watch it on Twitch.
 

God Confirm

We're all from Earthrealm. If not, cool pic brah.
I didn't know HBO did Game of Thrones though. I've never seen it.
And not necessarily. It could be a TV show that just plays dramas. Or it could be like ITV over here in England (which of course if you haven't heard of that is completely and utterly ridiculous :DOGE) which shows dramas, news, sport, comedy, reality, soaps etc.
Tbh I never really thought about it anyway, cos I'm not interested in american TV channels :p
look dont you DARE ask fuckin questions next time mate
 
Worldwide viewers over 500k is bad? Come on dude, I remember having to fucking go to an arcade and play/watch matches in the late 90s. Smh that people see Evo on ESPN and go "well they only had as many viewers(on ESPN not total) as a wnba game, they're fucked". This is kinda weak showing, but it's still the best any FGC event has ever done as far as I know.
MK got like 700k
 

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
Wouldn't take much from this yet. It seemed like they locked the timeslot super late (July 1, I think?) and there wasn't much buildup to it or advertising that I saw.

E-League is actually owned by Turner broadcasting, so they did all the appropriate buildup/promo and they've been pushing it for months.

Chasing the Cup wasn't on Twitch -- so if you weren't going to wait days for the rebroadcast, the only way to see it live was on TV.

Not sure if they'll do EVO again, but if they do, I think with proper promotion it could easily equal or surpass those other events.
 
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No one is taking a salty shot at SFV though. The thing is, if your scene is going to be represented via a TV channel that requires cable to have and caters to a demographic that hates video games and praises athletes, you better be damn sure the production and matches are diverse and hype. When you've got people on social media talking shit about your game because they wanted to watch something else related to sports, then yeah, it's bad publicity, regardless of what game you're playing.

While I don't think we can dismiss the somewhat high number of viewership, I do think that most people were probably turned off by the fact that non-Americans were mostly present throughout top 8 of EVO. I really don't see a case being made where someone in Japan would give a shit about an American sports channel and would much rather watch it on Twitch.
there's no such thing as bad publicity. Controversy isn't inherently bad when you have a product that has such a strong niche. The people who complain about video games are NEVER going to watch/be a part of the community. It's classic low risk/high reward, the FGC can't possibly lose members from it, all we can do is gain them.
 

Daemantalo

Not Good Enough
there's no such thing as bad publicity. Controversy isn't inherently bad when you have a product that has such a strong niche. The people who complain about video games are NEVER going to watch/be a part of the community. It's classic low risk/high reward, the FGC can't possibly lose members from it, all we can do is gain them.
Okay. I see your point of view. I understand your rationale. I personally just wouldn't want MK being dragged through Twitter because we tried to branch out into a field we had no idea about, come to find out that it may or may not backfire on us in terms of viewership or tournament attendance for next year.
 
Okay. I see your point of view. I understand your rationale. I personally just wouldn't want MK being dragged through Twitter because we tried to branch out into a field we had no idea about, come to find out that it may or may not backfire on us in terms of viewership or tournament attendance for next year.
i dunno, we'll have to wait and see. I just feel like for every one person that sends out a tweet about this thing they're never going to want to be a part of there's some other random dude finding out that we exist.
 
770,000 viewers for a first time FG Covered event that wasn't advertised as much as other shows seems like a pretty decent number. Keeping in mind it was the first time this has been televised.
 

gam224

The world's least hype player
In order for E-sports to grow it must not be E-Sports but competitive gaming. I think calling competitive gaming E-sports hurts us as a group because we come off as the nerd Olympics. We need to be our own thing before we can grow.