Born with a comic book in one hand and a remote control in the other, Cory DLG is the talent of Conroe's very own Nerd Thug Radio, Sports and Wrestling. Check out the podcast replay of the FM radio show at www.nerdthugradio.com!
It's been a crazy week in the world of esports.
Dreamhack has announced the Dreamhack Showdown at Dreamhack Valencia an all female CS:GO tournament in July. This is a massive and interesting development in the world of competitive gaming as this isn't an industry known for its inclusion. Last season there was only one professional female Overwatch player in the league and that was after the last place team replaced most of its roster in an effort to break its losing streak. There will be several qualifying events held in the build up to the July 5th through 7th event with a $100,000 prize pool at stake. May the best women win!
Riot Games has announced State Farm has signed a three year extension to stay on as a main sponsor and has even stepped up their participation to include global tournaments for the first time. Which is a big big deal for the League of Legends creators. They've been running a very successful league for awhile and building up momentum with sponsors for several years now and this is part of the natural growth and evolution of the League of Legends competitive scene. Many people speculate that fanbases will grow tired of these games at some point and the interest will peter out, but I would like to point out that Starcraft 2 is over ten years old and is still a staple of competitive gaming.
The last thing to mention this week is with the influx of money in esports comes the issue of protecting players and their rights. Audi and Gamestop have both recently announced their intention to get into gaming so there is money pouring in from every angle and the end result of all of that money is teams are signing players to contracts that make them the majority owners in the player's earnings with the intention of being a profitable business. That isn't the way other pro sports operate technically, collecting money from the players or only paying the player select amount of money from their winnings. The other leagues go the other way; they figure out what percentage of revenue should belong to the players and pay based on that number. In essence, the esports teams are working the problem from the opposite end, instead of giving the player everything they promise but base their promises on expected revenue, they are taking large percentages from the players to create a profit. This creates the atmosphere of disappointed players, they hear they won $10k but after the team takes their cut the player only receives $4k hypothetically. This kind of business model isn't going to last long.
Feel free to check out my digital short story The Wilson House or buy a shirt from Side Hustle Ts where some proceeds help fight cancer or listen to Nerd Thug Radio or support our Patreon Page. Thoughts, complaints, events and comments can be sent to corydlg@gmail.com.
