Why do so many teams go belly up? Why are there so many teams who say they offer the Promised Land but end up sending teams and players on a long journey through a desert of lost promises and fake sponsors? These are questions I often ask myself and quite frankly I equally often struggle to find a definitive answer to them. Personal glory and e-fame often get in the way of ideals and goals laid at the foundation of the organization. I’m here to give you my ideas on what you could do to better your efforts and help sustain yourself and your team in the long run, instead of becoming just another failed attempt at doing something different. By all means, I don’t consider myself a god on this front and I’ve been blessed that I could build up TEK9 to what it became. I’m equally blessed with the Antwerp Aces which is, despite being a relatively new project, doing quite well in its first six months.
Sit back as this guide gives you some insights into Team Management the way I have experienced it over the past five years. Part one will discuss some of the basics, part two will tackle some more in depth items.
Feel free to add me to Twitter (http://twitter.com/stevenleunens) for any feedback, comments, questions or ideas about new articles :)
Good read ;) although i want to add something about proposals - i have seen about 6 proposals from different teams in the last year. One thing that they all failed on (with the exception of one) was spelling and grammar.
I know mine is far from perfect, but I do know that if you are approaching a large company, the last thing you want to do is come across to them as an illiterate teenager - why would they want to give their money to you, if you can't even put a little time and effort into something as important as your proposal, are you really going to put as little time and effort into marketing them too?
Clearly wrong here i'm afraid. There are an excess amount of cases where managers who are not as fluent in writing the English language have got great results. I won't make examples but many include teams that are far more succesful than infused.
That's not negative critism, it's just the truth. All sponsors care about is a result, and you do not need to be able to spell correctly to be a confident individual
I personally wouldn't want to place my faith in a manager who had sub-par spelling and grammar. Maybe I'm generalising too much, but it's just how I roll. If they aren't able to spell basic words or put together basic sentences, to me that's a warning asl to how they approach the running of their "company".
Been struggling with nwave for 1.5 years now, and it's alot harder then I first expected, especially the sponsor part. But, we keep working, holding our promises, keep dreaming. Someday that one "yes" will come, i'm sure.
It's all true what Steven mentioned in the above article - nice read btw -
The problem is that all of us dream too much. They all heard the success stories of fatal1ty , team Complexity , eSuba and Fnatic. Every LAN will be funded , loads of hardware support ,etc ,etc.
Now the thing is everybody else wants to live that same dream and thinks they are worth it too .
Some organisations know this and they promise all kinds of LAN support, sponsor gear , you name it,..to attract those "dreamers" even if they can't support anything !
Now that's the bullet that finishes most organisations who are fair , who don't make fake promises.
I myself , am founder and manager of System6 , a rather small organisation not so known in the CoD community.I had one of the better team in W:ET for more than a year now. In the past my orga featured other games like cod2 and cod4 , but whenever you try to negotiate with a team with potential , there's always a random orga with a copied name and fake sponsors who promise them anything they need and woops , they're gone.
Ofcourse this comes out after a while and they end up empty-handed and that's what's killing esports in my opinion.
Like Steven said , take a look in the mirror first and question yourself if your goals are do-able !
nice read steven,
but u also have to mention out, that loads of teams imidiatly want some sort of lan support.
atm loads of teams are doing great, and if u want to pickup one.
they instantly want some lan funding. or they simply won't join ur org.
maybe s6.540H mo-O pointed that already out.
Good quick read through nothing ground breaking :) But it is the obvious and simple that eludes most teams
Though I must say you should put some perspective on the "few" making a living out of eSports, it's already, a guess pulled out of my head, in the region of a couple of thousand (outside of asia)
I agree - but a few thousand is stretching it and only if you consider the whole basis line of people making a living of eSports. Ranging from players to managers to company employees dedicated to eSports, tournament organisers and media specialised in eSports. This is still a tiny number compared to other sports for instance.
Hell even a 3rd provincial team (6th/7th class) in football here in Belgium (yes we are often crap at football) can afford to pay small wages to their players and sometimes even hire one or two fulltime staff. eSports still has a long way to go :)
The first things I done when starting a team up were the "Basics".
I think for any team to do well, they need a website. I always see people asking for links to sites etc. I think a good website = A good team 9 times out of 10.
Alot of teams these days are put together over night with people playing alongside one another who they've never met in their lives. I think if you want/need a decent team, you need to stick with 4-5 players who you know you can rely on.
I see soooo many teams fail because of a sheer lack of communication.
A website is probably the most important part to kick off with your esports team. Make it attractive, be innovative, be different, ... don't do things which 1000 other teams did with their website. From the moment you provide something which others don't, you will get more page views. Then, with the correct methods your Esports team will grow.
Read it yesterday evening but had to turn off my PC, so didn't reply. It was a good read and I hope some teams will get up now and won't fold after a month..
Excellent read. Another important thing imo is attitude when it comes to Esports, especially players. Having a lot of thing going on online has a lot of positive aspects but maybe even more bad aspects atm, a lot of them which can be changed, attitude being one of them.
edited 2010-01-12 21:35:06
I know mine is far from perfect, but I do know that if you are approaching a large company, the last thing you want to do is come across to them as an illiterate teenager - why would they want to give their money to you, if you can't even put a little time and effort into something as important as your proposal, are you really going to put as little time and effort into marketing them too?
edited 2010-01-12 21:39:18
That's not negative critism, it's just the truth. All sponsors care about is a result, and you do not need to be able to spell correctly to be a confident individual
I may be wrong but if I'm right that would mean you've been corrected by a french :SSSSS
edited 2010-01-13 11:34:47
<3
edited 2010-01-12 22:07:57
good read
Been struggling with nwave for 1.5 years now, and it's alot harder then I first expected, especially the sponsor part. But, we keep working, holding our promises, keep dreaming. Someday that one "yes" will come, i'm sure.
nice read verry interesting dfb good job mate, this will help me understand orgs much more
The problem is that all of us dream too much. They all heard the success stories of fatal1ty , team Complexity , eSuba and Fnatic. Every LAN will be funded , loads of hardware support ,etc ,etc.
Now the thing is everybody else wants to live that same dream and thinks they are worth it too .
Some organisations know this and they promise all kinds of LAN support, sponsor gear , you name it,..to attract those "dreamers" even if they can't support anything !
Now that's the bullet that finishes most organisations who are fair , who don't make fake promises.
I myself , am founder and manager of System6 , a rather small organisation not so known in the CoD community.I had one of the better team in W:ET for more than a year now. In the past my orga featured other games like cod2 and cod4 , but whenever you try to negotiate with a team with potential , there's always a random orga with a copied name and fake sponsors who promise them anything they need and woops , they're gone.
Ofcourse this comes out after a while and they end up empty-handed and that's what's killing esports in my opinion.
Like Steven said , take a look in the mirror first and question yourself if your goals are do-able !
soz 4 tl;dr
but u also have to mention out, that loads of teams imidiatly want some sort of lan support.
atm loads of teams are doing great, and if u want to pickup one.
they instantly want some lan funding. or they simply won't join ur org.
maybe s6.540H mo-O pointed that already out.
edited 2010-01-13 09:32:31
Though I must say you should put some perspective on the "few" making a living out of eSports, it's already, a guess pulled out of my head, in the region of a couple of thousand (outside of asia)
Hell even a 3rd provincial team (6th/7th class) in football here in Belgium (yes we are often crap at football) can afford to pay small wages to their players and sometimes even hire one or two fulltime staff. eSports still has a long way to go :)
I think for any team to do well, they need a website. I always see people asking for links to sites etc. I think a good website = A good team 9 times out of 10.
Alot of teams these days are put together over night with people playing alongside one another who they've never met in their lives. I think if you want/need a decent team, you need to stick with 4-5 players who you know you can rely on.
I see soooo many teams fail because of a sheer lack of communication.
Good of you to take the time to write this. I know alot of orgs don't fully understand the basics :).
(Will link this to kevlar immediatly :P)
Thanks for this
want more :D
+1