

Justin.tv launches TwitchTV: A destination site for eSports - rabidsnail
http://www.twitchtv.com/

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riprock
Just to point how competitive starcraft 2 is right now:

Global Starcraft League is pretty much monthly. first place wins $80,000,
second place wins $25,000, and so on

[http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=141...](http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=141496)

The North American StarCraft League, funded for a minimum of 3 seasons with a
$400,000 total prize pool

[http://www.gosugamers.net/starcraft2/news/14686-400-000-priz...](http://www.gosugamers.net/starcraft2/news/14686-400-000-prize-
pool-announced-for-north-american-starcraft-league)

IGN Pro League, $50,000 prize pool for each season

[http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=218...](http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=218996)

Then there are MANY other tournaments, such as MLG, Blizzcon, Dreamhack, and
TSL.

[http://pro.majorleaguegaming.com/competitions/17#event_36_pr...](http://pro.majorleaguegaming.com/competitions/17#event_36_prizes)

starcraft2, if anything, is a huge GLOBAL success so far as an esport.

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askedrelic
Finally, I've been seeing several job postings relating to this site for
weeks!

I'm a big SC fan and have been watching the community and the money grow the
last year, since SC2 got released. As they have on the frontpage, the SC2
community is huge and between TSL, MLG, GomTV, and NASL, lots of money is
flowing their direction for ads and promotions. MLG Columbus took place this
weekend with an estimated 110K viewers over the weekend. It's a growing
market!

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Hates_
A great site that's been doing the rounds for "eSports" TV is WarpPrism. Has
different channels for games and allows PiP: <http://warpprism.com/>

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peterquest
Hey justin.tv, stop punishing me for logging in by making me watch _another_
ad. It just makes me not want to log in. Is that the intent?

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emmett
Good point, we probably shouldn't roll a second ad after login on a channel
page.

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cachemoney
Also, I don't know if I really want to hear about Enya from Bakersfield any
more. Please do something about ad fatigue and/or inventory.

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sawyer
I personally prefer the league model of GOMtv.net or MLG.com to the individual
user channel structure that Justin.tv has pursued here.

When people sit at home watching sports they want to see the latest game from
the NHL/MBA/NBA/NFL, etc, not a stream someone's recorded in the field across
from their house.

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ianl
People like to watch professional players so they can learn things, and also
entertained.

There is value being created for these individuals and JustinTV has snatched
up the market by offering revenue sharing deals to get people to switch.

Just the other week, a player named TheLittleOne has 15-20k Uniques watching
his stream for twenty four hours.

They are not massive audience draws like MLG, or GomTV, but for the cost of
producing one could easily argue the marginal profit is higher.

Secondly, a lot of tournaments actually stream through JustinTV, like NASL.
While not having the production value of the previously mentioned it has a
large amount of consistent audience draw.

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nkassis
TSL3 was drawing in excess of 70k viewers for their tournament. It's not a bad
deal considering this is real viewers and not "Nielsen family" style
calculations.

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ianl
This is a very good point, you can pull higher CPM since everything is
directly measured.

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thomasgerbe
"Better than real sports"

 _rolls eyes_

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jmtame
Have you ever watched the interesting casters like Husky Starcraft? It gets
intense, much more exciting to watch than golf or NASCAR.

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thomasgerbe
I watch Starcraft games narrated by HD and am definitely engrossed.

My point is not that it's boring but rather it's an annoying comparison. I
like watching Starcraft games and the Stanley Cup playoffs. For a site to tell
me that one is better than the other is unnecessary.

I like HackerNews better than Digg. Does HN need the slogan: Better than Digg?

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jmtame
I don't think Hacker News has any interest in comparing itself to other news
sites, but direct comparisons have been used successfully in advertising
before. I don't think it's annoying in this case because nerds are typically
just not drawn to the whole sports scene (at least the ones I know). I see
this more as a message to nerds saying "hey we are running this type of sports
broadcasting that doesnt suck because it's not boring. By the way, it's going
to be huge--tons of people are already watching."

It's not really a direct comparison though, this is more of a category
comparison of esports vs traditional sports. It's not like JustinTV is saying
"our site is better than MLG and GOMtv combined!" I see them as promoting
esports in general, which is actually very good for the gaming scene overall.

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starnix17
Not really related to WWDC, but isn't today a bad day to announce something
like this?

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javanix
It is also the first day of pressers for E3, so they probably wanted to tie in
with that.

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starnix17
Ah, that does make sense then.

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middus
If I click the link I am being redirected to <http://de.justin.tv/>,
Justin.tv's German site. Is this intended?

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emmett
It's a bug. We're fixing it.

