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ESWC bankruptcy; three in a row

Ties — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 13:31:17 +0000

At March 30th, a French courthouse declares Game-Services’ bankruptcy. Game-Services is the organiser of world-renowned Electronic Sports World Cup. Earlier I wrote about the demise of both CPL en CGS, and it seems the worst is not behind us.

A few weeks ago, Danish team Meet your Maker also went bankrupt, leaving Dutch gaming legend Manuel ‘Grubby’ Schenkhuijzen without an organisation. It seems worser times are still to come, because the recession only just set in; resulting in lacking or lower sponsor budgets in a very top-heavy market. But is this really not their fault? I don’t think so!

In a market that is only based on corporate sponsoring, it was bound to happen some time. The companies going bankrupt in the past few months were not the strongest few in the bunch; they based their growth upon the marketing budgets allowed by the big-budget sponsors, not on the growth of the market itself.

Neither of these companies would’ve been able to get to the position they were in without the sponsoring of big companies; they were building a service for gamers, that apparently wasn’t good enough for enough people to pay for!

Crude? Perhaps, but the current market conditions seem to agree with me. The only organisation still standing, and going strong, is the Electronic Sports League, a company that was projecting to be 60% consumer based in terms of revenue when I talked to them 3 years ago. Who knows what they’ve accomplished by now!

ESL versus ESWC

Ties — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 13:59:15 +0000

Yesterday I reported on the ESL Masters prize purse of 280.000 euro, today it appears that the ESWC, another big e-sports organisation, has lost its main sponsor Nvidia. Even though they collaborated on last years finals in LA, the bad attendance and the nature of the on and off the partnership are speculated to be crucial in this final descision.

Nvidia appears to be reducing the amount of involvement in the e-sports scene, lets hope major investors like Intel are not thinking about doing the same. In terms of trends, not much to discover here, nobody knows what to expect from 2009, but it would be sad to see the 2009 season be the season to show a decline in what has been 12 years of growth in the market.

ESL Extreme Masters: Finals with €280.000 purse

Ties — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 19:01:06 +0000

The latest pressrelease by ESL states that the European Finals will be combined with the Global Finals. While this does not automatically merge the prize purses, this does mean that one event will give out a total of 280.000 euro in prizes. The final will be at the CeBit event in Hannover, not that far from Holland if you look at it that way, but perhaps a little further for you. The two games are World of Warcraft and Counter-Strike 1.6, teams like SK Gaming and mTw are already qualified, these two alone would ensure a fantastic tournament.

I have visited this event about 3 times, and I liked it every one of them. So, looking for a trip into gaming, or any of the other million disciplines available at the CeBit. Go check it out!