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I think Valve set eSports back about a decade with their Dota 2 tournament at Gamescom. It showed a broader audience about the biggest turn off with these tournaments: poor organization and technical problems. Not to mention MOBA games in general are terrible to watch (but fun to play) with a good chunk of a game consisting of farming monsters and trying to gank a player 4v1. In the StarCraft II scene, MLG Dallas and the NASL Season 1 Grand Finals were just as embarrassing to watch and I can understand why people don't get into spectating games if these are the tournaments getting the biggest coverage. Terrible production quality, stupid scheduling, bad commentators, and games lagging were issues just way too common to ignore. But, I think it has a broader appeal than the niche/hardcore following the article is implying. I, like many other people, watch StarCraft II way more than I actually play it. All it takes is one good game, one good tournament, and casters who aren't terrible. I think I'm right in saying the GSL was revealed to have 20,000 subscribers paying at least 10 dollars a month for premium services when gomtv.net got hacked and had previously reported that 100,000 people tuned in to the English stream for one of the finals.

Thanks for covering eSports, would love it if you covered the [much larger] StarCraft II scene. GSL/IEM/MLG represent :)