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The CGS and how marketing works - sometimes
It is day one after the self-proclaimed world's first truly professional video gaming league closed its doors, calling it quits. What exactly happened here, was it a project ahead of its time or was it just another failure we had seen coming its way?
By Alexander T. 'TheSlaSH' Müller-Rodic
Nov 19, 2008 10:02
It is day one after the self-proclaimed world's first truly professional video gaming league closed its doors, calling it quits. What exactly happened here, was it a project ahead of its time or was it just another failure we had seen coming its way?
When I first heard of the CGS and what they wanted to do, I was amazed that you could actually come along and think you could re-define eSports as it was back then. As you can imagine, SK among most of the other G7 teams was involved in discussions and negotiations with this project from a very early point in time.
After their shopping tour in the US, getting both, 3D and complexity as their franchise brands, the CGS management thought European teams were easy targets. What they missed to understand was the fact that some of us already had accomplished a lot and within a short period of time created companies that actually made money.
I remember very well, when it came to a showdown between SK and the CGS regarding ourselves becoming a franchise or not. The evaluation of SK Gaming by the CGS management at that time was more or less a joke, cause again, we were no brand to be built. We were already out there, running one of the larger teams with a lot of success and most important, we were actually being sponsored already.
Now look at that and the chances the CGS have missed. Europe is and was very different from the US back then and is today. We have the SKs, Mousesports, MYMs, mTws and Fnatics, only to mention a few and these teams are doing a great job for eSports.
Europe is a huge eSports continent and it needed more than 3 teams from this area in a CGS if this league ever wanted to be taken serious.
Imagine, Mousesports for Germany, SK for Sweden, Fnatic for the UK, MYM....just pick a country, Denmark maybe? Whatever, the CGS could have had a strong stand in Europe and with the sponsors attached to the teams already, these teams would not have cost money, but would have brought something to the table. And so far I am not including you, the community that would have followed as well (if certain adjustments to the system would have been added).
So all in all the policy of trying to create these franchise only teams simply did not work. Calling this strategy ahead of time is a lie. The CGS was told better. They got concepts that showed a different scenario with smaller adjustments, but they did not listen or thought of themselves to outsmart the market.
The system of the league could have been interesting. Just think about it. CS 1.6, WC3 1on1, FIFA 1on1 and now maybe WoW 3on3, you name it. The games and titles we love that much, the players we know and follow, the teams we cheer for.
Now do not think CGS was not told to work on the system. Instead they had several whisperes telling them what to do, but the people behind did not listen.
So again I am asking, was their project ahead of time? Is it so that we the community didn't get the message CGS was sending and will understand the whole thing in a couple of years?
No!
The truth is, we all together have created an eSports environment that is far beyond what the CGS tried to enforce. We includes all of us. You, the fans that follow eSports. You, the guys that run the best tournaments and leagues out there, free for anyone to compete in. You, the sponsors and partners that chose this very market to help develop it and market yourselves in. And last but not least you, the guys that run teams, that create the rivalty, that play, manage and do all they can to be the best team in the world.
The CGS was neither the world's first truly professional video gaming league, nor was their concept ahead of time. Look at the people behind the organisation. the guys that ran operations. Some faces might be familiar to you. And it is not the first organisation they leave in ashes!
The concept of CGS was a very very US driven approach on professional sports. This works in the US only I guess, as Europe is anything but like that comparing how the system runs and how teams are managed.
Instead their concept without adjustments was a huge failure from the beginning.
Now why am I even bothering?
Due to two reasons:
a) cause in their closing statement they don't have the guts to admit the wrong path they have been following and instead try to stick with the wrong idea. By doing so, they kind of tell us (you and me) that we are wrong...now how bad is that? :)
b) cause they burned all this money that could have done good to our eSports community. It is hard telling people that this investment did not work due to management rather than a market not working and this is what they leave us with.
Let's keep up with the good work all of us (you, the fans, you the leagues and tournaments, you the sponsors and you the teams) do in eSports and we will continue to get better and better, larger and larger and in the end the world's ONLY (,first and truly) professional video gaming community there is.
After their shopping tour in the US, getting both, 3D and complexity as their franchise brands, the CGS management thought European teams were easy targets. What they missed to understand was the fact that some of us already had accomplished a lot and within a short period of time created companies that actually made money.
I remember very well, when it came to a showdown between SK and the CGS regarding ourselves becoming a franchise or not. The evaluation of SK Gaming by the CGS management at that time was more or less a joke, cause again, we were no brand to be built. We were already out there, running one of the larger teams with a lot of success and most important, we were actually being sponsored already.
Now look at that and the chances the CGS have missed. Europe is and was very different from the US back then and is today. We have the SKs, Mousesports, MYMs, mTws and Fnatics, only to mention a few and these teams are doing a great job for eSports.
Europe is a huge eSports continent and it needed more than 3 teams from this area in a CGS if this league ever wanted to be taken serious.
Imagine, Mousesports for Germany, SK for Sweden, Fnatic for the UK, MYM....just pick a country, Denmark maybe? Whatever, the CGS could have had a strong stand in Europe and with the sponsors attached to the teams already, these teams would not have cost money, but would have brought something to the table. And so far I am not including you, the community that would have followed as well (if certain adjustments to the system would have been added).
So all in all the policy of trying to create these franchise only teams simply did not work. Calling this strategy ahead of time is a lie. The CGS was told better. They got concepts that showed a different scenario with smaller adjustments, but they did not listen or thought of themselves to outsmart the market.
The system of the league could have been interesting. Just think about it. CS 1.6, WC3 1on1, FIFA 1on1 and now maybe WoW 3on3, you name it. The games and titles we love that much, the players we know and follow, the teams we cheer for.
Now do not think CGS was not told to work on the system. Instead they had several whisperes telling them what to do, but the people behind did not listen.
So again I am asking, was their project ahead of time? Is it so that we the community didn't get the message CGS was sending and will understand the whole thing in a couple of years?
No!
The truth is, we all together have created an eSports environment that is far beyond what the CGS tried to enforce. We includes all of us. You, the fans that follow eSports. You, the guys that run the best tournaments and leagues out there, free for anyone to compete in. You, the sponsors and partners that chose this very market to help develop it and market yourselves in. And last but not least you, the guys that run teams, that create the rivalty, that play, manage and do all they can to be the best team in the world.
The CGS was neither the world's first truly professional video gaming league, nor was their concept ahead of time. Look at the people behind the organisation. the guys that ran operations. Some faces might be familiar to you. And it is not the first organisation they leave in ashes!
The concept of CGS was a very very US driven approach on professional sports. This works in the US only I guess, as Europe is anything but like that comparing how the system runs and how teams are managed.
Instead their concept without adjustments was a huge failure from the beginning.
Now why am I even bothering?
Due to two reasons:
a) cause in their closing statement they don't have the guts to admit the wrong path they have been following and instead try to stick with the wrong idea. By doing so, they kind of tell us (you and me) that we are wrong...now how bad is that? :)
b) cause they burned all this money that could have done good to our eSports community. It is hard telling people that this investment did not work due to management rather than a market not working and this is what they leave us with.
Let's keep up with the good work all of us (you, the fans, you the leagues and tournaments, you the sponsors and you the teams) do in eSports and we will continue to get better and better, larger and larger and in the end the world's ONLY (,first and truly) professional video gaming community there is.
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There was another point the CGS failed with... the broadcasting. In Europe just a few people had the chance to watch CGS matches (live). Even I was amazed too bout the new concept to make esport more like a lifestyle product, you always need to care bout gameplay, the players and of course broadcasting.
Without a close work with the esports companies, the players and the community there's no chance for a new concept like that.
"Now look at that and the chances the CGS have missed. Europe is and was very different from the US back then and is today. We have the SKs, Mousesports, MYMs, mTws and Fnatics, only to mention a few and these teams are doing a great job for eSports." ...the best!!!
The CGS has at the beginning the wrong games!
For my side, I think that the CGS knew they had a bad standing and a worse product than what was already available; why would they else choose games where they didn't have any competitors?
It's easy to be smart in retrospective though. I don't believe that the platform CGS had was ahead of time; it was just aimed at the wrong audience.
gj
Oh, and nice write-up alex. Nice to hear what the bosses think once in a while :P
I tried to make clear how much respect I have for all the others, especially for ESL, ESWC and WCG, but also our competitors, well, not all of them, obviously :)
(refering to TexXxas)
Really liked the article.
Told DELL f.e. long ago, that's just a dump for Sponsorship money but it is still hard to get someone to notice of their failures until the shit hits the fan.
Fortunately Sponsors see that concepts and Marketing for their prime products in eSports do work if they work with established Teams like SK, companies like ESL and especially with the Community and not against it, I think the Intel Extreme Masters Tournament is a very good example for that.
CPL has been another bad example for trying to push some Games as Painkiller on the Community that in the end did not even had more than 60 active professional players at all and Angel failed as well because he stopped listening to the Community and kept listening to his Bank Account.
Do not trust statistics you did not falsify yourself is still a true Statement in this part of the Business, which Sponsors still need to learn.
Overall, I totally agree on your opinion,
if you are pathetic enough to tell the companies, media and especially the people outside that you are the "world's first truly professional video gaming league" you should also have the balls to tell them that you failed miserably in terms of concept execution to just leave the battlefield with money in the pocket for your own in the end.
You know some of the numbers that have been paid, it is a shame what has been wasted with no financial backup plan at all.
Let us just hope some of their Partners do not put the eSports Market on the Budget Blacklist for some time now but instead learn from it and choose more careful what they pay for.
Anyway, failures like CGS have to be made as well in this still young market to learn from it and make it better next time. There is still a long road to go for everyone and lots to learn.
I just can repeat what you already said.
"Let's keep up with the good work all of us (you, the fans, you the leagues and tournaments, you the sponsors and you the teams) do in eSports and we will continue to get better and better, larger and larger and in the end the world's ONLY (,first and truly) professional video gaming community there is."
Keep up the good writing. You should do that more frequently buddy.
Just my two Cents.
a) we knew better and told them and they wanted to know and still did not act
b) the way they say good bye is pathetic
:)
American ppl want to see american guys owning all other countries.
Main sponsors were Directv and XBOX, no wonder why they picked those games.
About the game format and the show itself, just ask yourself why their sports are american football and baseball.
I was actually living there for my job last year and i watched CGS and i was like : goooood and now american people will think esports is some girls playing dead or alive.
America has never been into esports, thanks to intel for CPL, id software and blizzard.
just so true
the match system was quite interesting though imo ...
it's sad .... :/
or can u imagine, if CPL would release now a news that they are back and they hold an event next month, any team would attend ?
imagine: every 1 that watched CGS on TV, every "fan" that spectated any news/matches of this league, every sponsor they had, every company that was willing to broadcast this shit.. ALL OF THEM, everyone that was involved in ANY WAY has now wrong impressions about esport, they have bad feelings when they hear something like "esport" or "video-games" and they are really hard to convince again to trust esport..
thank you CGS for do nothing but wasting the money - that was actually the money that is hard to get back to esport - thank you, for destroying the US community, thank you for making the life of your players/manager harder coz they dont get any money now after they trusted u, thank u for beeing so dump instead of believing the guys that know esport, THANK YOU for making this harder for us..
i am looking forward to the next US-superduper-megagiga-project within esports..
and sorry for my bad english
Regarding G7: We can only be as strong as others let us be. In case of CPL we had a strong point and we communicated it the right way I think. Other leagues and tournaments are talking a lot to the group and use our feedback to elevate their work. I understand most of that stays behind the curtain, but it is happening!
or can u imagine, if CPL would release now a news that they are back and they hold an event next month, any team would attend ?
Ask Sasha Tsapaev! :D
I mean, I know u guys may have a lot of informations from the behind, u probably knew about CGS a year before “we” did, but in the time u hear something about it, its already planed, talked about and discussed by them. I don’t think they will change their systems and way of working just coz “any other organisation like G7” might think that its not good..
u got the advantage that the community will listen to you, and not to any organisation they don’t know yet (even if the organisation is run by ppl that are also in the community for a long time)..so, use this advantage.. I bet if u would have told your thoughts on CGS in public it would have changed something. don’t know how much or what it would have changed...maybe less ppl would have joined this CGS-thing, maybe the sponsors of CGS would have read it and make their own thoughts, maybe the CGS it selfs would have react then coz the community was irritated..
the point at the end is just: i hope the G7 would 1. have more power and 2. use their power in a positive way to avoid bad stuff from the community like this.
a) we clearyl told CGS that picking CSS over 1.6 is a huge mistake, as the community won't follow. Others tried the same (WCG) and had to switch back, so we had a good example at hand. also we highly recommended an RTS game to tie in the Asien market. CGS simply put it aside and did what they thought was better.
b) if someone gets a multi million investment to spend and if he thinks he is doing the very right thing, how will you stop him from spending it the wrong way? I mean, name it G7, name it NASA, name it CIA or whatever, no one would have had the power to stop the CGS from spending their money the wrong way.
c) the G7 is doing a lot of good things already with the ones that truly built and will build eSport :)
"b) cause they burned all this money that could have done good to our eSports community. It is hard telling people that this investment did not work due to management rather than a market not working and this is what they leave us with."
still, there is a difference!
Of course they can adjust in their course, cause investments like this are aimed for an overall goal. The way to achieve is more or less the operational part and the exact execution is up to the investment receiver. Now assuming the overall goal was to create a running business with a TV eSports league, operating globally, we can assume also that different ways would have lead to thie goal and that is why my argument stands.