EVB Gaming Disbands Team

[Scott The Scot]

In the past few hours, EVB has announced that they will no longer be financially supporting their players. EVB wrote via their twitter page that they were unable to generate outside funding to support the team.

(Read from the botton tweet upwards)

This change has affected many well known players in the FGC from multiple games. Some of the notable names from the Mortal Kombat community are Kitana Prime, Dragon, VenDeTTa, and Big D. Chris Tartarian, a well known Street Fighter V player (and member of the Ken trinity) has also departed from the team.



Source: EVB's https://twitter.com/evbgaming

@Kitana Prime
@Big D
@STORMS
@Eldriken
@Youphemism
@EVB_VenDeTTa
@EVB Alright RyRy
@EVB Dragon
@EVB Gaming
@EVB SomeCubanGuy

 

[SneakyTortoise]

Free agent aSneakyTortoise

 

[Scott The Scot]

Some of the tweets from the former EVB MKX players:

 

[D. R.]

Guess it's back to the best sponsor one could ask for:

JOB

 

[Eldriken]

Guess it's back to the best sponsor one could ask for:

JOB

Now the real fundamentals and footsies start.

But on a serious note, I'm sorry to hear this happened. I liked a lot of EVB members and EVB seemed like a pretty awesome sponsor.

Best of luck to all of you who were involved with EVB.

 

[Braindead]

I want to announce that I'm no longer a member of team NLT. They all fucking suck and are just a bunch of cucks who'll never git gud at anything.

I'm now a free agent.

 

[Wowbiggulps]

Kudos to EVB for a classy message and being open about everything.

Safe to say everyone involved will be okay land on their feet--theyre all great players and valuable assets to the community.

 

[GGA Max]

Lmk if you guys want to get sponsored, the deal is you have to come to my house, wash the dishes, sweep the floor, and cook me dinner.

Slide into my dms.

 

[Jynks]

You know, I think a really interesting article for someone to write for this community would be exactly how these teams work. I know there is a business angle in their somewhere, but I can not work out what it is. I mean how to these guys make money? What is the motivation for them as a body to fund these players? Like we all love "e-sports" and many of us watch hours and hours of the FGC streams, but really, in my case anyway, I have little idea of what the hell the FGC really is and how it generates income for the sponsors.

I know that @Big D wrote a bunch of articles about ESL that were really good, maybe if he has time as he is a insider he could shed some light on this, or another one of the sponsors / sponsored.

Like how did ESL make money, flying people from all over the world to America, 100 and 1000s of dollars in prize pools... I mean .. what?? I figure that physical events with entery fees and all that, probably renting floor space to stores etc etc makes cash that way... but virtual comps like ESL and Strem.ME?

Like we all know that sponsorship has advertising concepts in it, like Team Razor forcing everyone to use Razor Control Sticks, but is that really ALL that those teams are about.

This EVB Guys, they closed shop for MK because of failing ot get funding.. but what / where exactly that funding come from if you can get it working? Yomi built that arcade "studio" place... what happened to that? Is it still there, dose it just used for something else.. how are they making cash?

I would love to see a deep article about this side of the show that is completely hidden to many of the community.. or maybe just me : )

 

[rubmytaco]

You know, I think a really interesting article for someone to write for this community would be exactly how these teams work. I know there is a business angle in their somewhere, but I can not work out what it is. I mean how to these guys make money? What is the motivation for them as a body to fund these players? Like we all love "e-sports" and many of us watch hours and hours of the FGC streams, but really, in my case anyway, I have little idea of what the hell the FGC really is and how it generates income for the sponsors.

I know that @Big D wrote a bunch of articles about ESL that were really good, maybe if he has time as he is a insider he could shed some light on this, or another one of the sponsors / sponsored.

Like how did ESL make money, flying people from all over the world to America, 100 and 1000s of dollars in prize pools... I mean .. what?? I figure that physical events with entery fees and all that, probably renting floor space to stores etc etc makes cash that way... but virtual comps like ESL and Strem.ME?

Like we all know that sponsorship has advertising concepts in it, like Team Razor forcing everyone to use Razor Control Sticks, but is that really ALL that those teams are about.

This EVB Guys, they closed shop for MK because of failing ot get funding.. but what / where exactly that funding come from if you can get it working? Yomi built that arcade "studio" place... what happened to that? Is it still there, dose it just used for something else.. how are they making cash?

I would love to see a deep article about this side of the show that is completely hidden to many of the community.. or maybe just me : )

Easy answer: Teams get money from brands for exposure (logos/info on website, jerseys, etc.). The teams then use that money to send players to events.

However, I imagine this was a chicken/egg situation where you need to have well known players to get sponsors in the first place, but to get those players, you need to send them to events. If that investment doesn't lead to more sponsors, there's no future for the team. There's obviously a limit to how much you can invest.

Disclaimer: I have no insider info here. This just seems like a plausible scenario.

 

[igotAhalo]

Damn this sucks. Only if some millionaire who really liked fgc came in and funded evb, that would be tight lol

 

[EntropicByDesign]

That sucks for the guys they were sponsoring. Sad to hear it. I think we'll be seeing more of this moving forward though.

As mentioned, these sponsors attract larger corporations and try to garner funding by those larger entities by saying 'Hey, we have famous players we are sending to events and who are repping our brand, invest in us and they will have your logo on their jerseys and use your products, etc' but the exposure the investors get for their money is pretty middling.. I mean, if I'm BenQ, just as an example, I dont need to invest much/any in individual teams when i can just invest in the event(s) themselves and the world sees my monitors in every match. Same goes for headphones and such.

There has been a lot of talk about this on the MOBA side of e-sports, with teams needing/wanting/trying to work with the game's development company and high profile event coordinators to come up with additional forms of revenue.

Streaming and content creation is also a large part of team incomes in general and it gives investors additional places to seek exposure.. they can add their products and logos to streams and YouTube videos and things like that. I dont see *that* many sponsored FGC guys really pushing a lot of content out there and I dont blame them, we have a much smaller audience pool thanb MOBAs.. Popular MOBA streams pull 3-15k viewers and very popular FGC streams are lucky to break 1500 on a great day.

It all comes down to revenue generation for the team itself and its investors.. Investors dont have a lot of room to push a brand or make a statement with nothing but a little logo on a team shirt. Not enough for the wider FGC to see support any way. There will be exceptions and mega-star players and big name teams and all that, but again, Im speaking of the small teams and the teams in the middle that are trying to establish themselves.

Now, our esport of choice doesn't lend itself super well to this kind of thing as Ive said, but I feel like teams need to sit down and work on ways to seek exposure outside of sending a few players to a couple tournaments here and there (Im not saying EVB did this and was lackadaisical about it, I'm just speaking in generalities) and expecting little logos on a jersey to get investors excited. Content creation.. YouTube videos with tutorials and sets and match analysis and information, and just plain fun/gibberish.. Regular, structured streams with decent production value.. Finding SOME way to sit down with Capcom and event coordinators to find additional sources of revenue..

For example, and this is just spitballing.. Imagine if you could purchase ingame items that supported your team/player of choice. In MKX, lets say, I dunno, a background logo or something that was visible during your online matches and a portion of that purchase price goes to the team/player its based on. The obvious next step would be costumes.. Thats a hugely involved process so outside special events, like when SFV let Kaz design samurai Necalli, these costumes would be something really simple, like a color reskin the player/team approved, or some small but noticeable difference to a main/popular costume that customized it for that player, etc. Something that has a minimal R&D effort behind it to keep costs low, but its still distinct enough to make fans want to buy it to show their support.

This is all just opinionated junk from me of course and Im not speaking directly towards EVB at all, just in general. I see a lot of these little teams here and there with sponsored players that dont seem to have a presence that I can identify outside of a jersey and one or two players you may or may not have heard of, playing at a handful of events every year.. That just doesnt feel like enough to attract the advertising dollar of sponsors. Its a tricky situation to deal with, but one the FGC is going to have to deal with if they want to keep moving forward and keep growing the FGC.

 

[STB Shujinkydink]

Didn't exile disband recently too? Or am I crazy

 

[Scott The Scot]

Didn't exile disband recently too? Or am I crazy

As far as I know, a lot of players left but the team is still there and some members still remain (mostly online clan, I think)

 

[STB Shujinkydink]

As far as I know, a lot of players left but the team is still there and some members still remain (mostly online clan, I think)

I heard they made all these crazy sponsorship claims that never came to fruition

 

[SneakyTortoise]

I heard they made all these crazy sponsorship claims that never came to fruition

That's probably true for most of them, I'd be amazed if anyone other than sonic, foxy and scar actually get flights and stuff paid for

 

[Big D]

You know, I think a really interesting article for someone to write for this community would be exactly how these teams work. I know there is a business angle in their somewhere, but I can not work out what it is. I mean how to these guys make money? What is the motivation for them as a body to fund these players? Like we all love "e-sports" and many of us watch hours and hours of the FGC streams, but really, in my case anyway, I have little idea of what the hell the FGC really is and how it generates income for the sponsors.

I know that @Big D wrote a bunch of articles about ESL that were really good, maybe if he has time as he is a insider he could shed some light on this, or another one of the sponsors / sponsored.

Oh...I plan on it.

 

[Tweedy]

I heard they made all these crazy sponsorship claims that never came to fruition

Oh my god lol.

Exile got hate because Exile never promised anything crazy, so they weren't looked at as a super legit sponsor.

Somehow through the gossip train that turns into Exile falling short on promises. Jesus this community.

 

[STB Shujinkydink]

That's probably true for most of them, I'd be amazed if anyone other than sonic, foxy and scar actually get flights and stuff paid for

Yeah I just got a dm from the gal that's helping with the team I was mistaken. Apparently one of the co leaders over promised things to new recruits that were never intended. I can guess who too lol

 

[Alright RyRy]

It does suck, not gonna lie. Even though I still know everyone and can still talk with them it just doesn't feel the same.

My level was play was no where near the other guys on EVB, not even sure why I got picked up to be honest. I got 33rd at EVO and CEO while being sponsored by them. Nothing to brag about.

But it was fun, I met some amazing people while attending those events. The thing I am going to miss is being apart of a small family. That is the one thing I want again.

 

[Diego de Souza Costa]

this sucks... while team-based competitive games (CS, Overwatch, Dota, etc...) are on the rise, 1v1 games are stuck in a limbo right now, they can't "grow", SFV that seems to be the big one, is just a side show on a CS event.... :,(

P.S. hope that all those guys can find a new team soon !!

 

[Ze Dingo]

It's a sad day.