GomTV Global Starcraft 2 League
I talked earlier this year about how GomTV acquired exclusive rights for Starcraft 2 broadcasting in South Korea. Well, it seems that this exclusive deal is working out for the players, as GomTV just announced a huge world-wide Starcraft II league with payoffs that are through the roof the other day. There will be monthly tournaments which pay a whopping USD 85,500, pay-outs for 2010 totaling about USD 500,000 (and that is only four months!).
Personally I won’t participate in the whole shebang and certainly won’t ever make a dime through it, but I love the fact that there will be a lucrative pro-scene to follow. That means more high-level tournament coverage for us to watch as well as a generally high awareness for the game. Who knows, this might even spawn the possibility for professional Starcraft 2 gaming outside of Korea, which would be awesome.
Even if you don’t care much about Starcraft II, think about the meaning of this if it succeeds. Other games might get similar treatments in the future and we might finally see e-sports take off. My only gripe with the whole thing is that such high payouts might lead to a diminished interest in lesser tournaments. Today, the USD 2000 payout of something like Day[9]’s launch event is interesting enough to get top level players to participate. Will it still be that way when they could be competing for forty times that much money?
Below are the tournament payouts according to teamliquid.net:
- Winner: 100,000,000 KRW (aprox. $85,700 USD)
- Runner-Up: 30,000,000 KRW (aprox. $25,700 USD)
- Semi-Finalists: 10,000,000 KRW (aprox. $8,600 USD)
- Quarter-Finalists: 4,000,000 KRW (aprox. $3,400 USD)
- Round of 16: 2,000,000 KRW (aprox. $1710 USD)
- Round of 32: 500,000 KRW (aprox. $430 USD)
- Round of 64: 300,000 KRW (aprox. $260 USD)