It is a grim day for NA Dota 2 as gocr4zy have decided to release their roster for Dota 2. The reason, @ReinessaGaming explains.
The NA Dota scene has received a hit as Evil Geniuses is now the only organization to fund a Dota 2 roster in North America. The reason @ReinessaGaming on Twitter says that its not a simple reason to blame betting for the lack of funding in the North Americas.
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NA being a rich demographic for sponsors
America being a first-world country, are in a better position to buy products that are marketed with a healthy budget. There are large amount of sponsors that are willing to actually fund these organizations and players, however she mentions that it is not as much funding as the betting organizations.
Finding sponsors is not the problem as they are willing, however for the discovery of a sponsors and striking a deal takes an awful amount of time for the salesperson in the organization, with the commission being only around $150~300 from one deal and be closer to $3000 dollars close to their sales quota.
Let us talk about online tournaments then, 5 best of 3s and 5 5K highlight videos will provide 350,000 views for the sponsored product. Could be easily worth $5k-10k for a group stage. Double if they reach the finals.
The problem however is that the salesperson would have to find the sponsor, strike a good deal with the sponsor with such a budget, sign paperwork and more for only a few hundred dollars. Hence the salesperson, for a small amount of commission and a bigger sales quota, the salesperson would have to find and make multiple deals with sponsors which the organizations feel are not worth the time.
Why betting sponsors are easier
Landing a betting deal for an organization will provide tens and hundreds thousands of dollars and it is all included in one deal and one contract. The end of the year sales quota or goal is met and the player salaries are also paid. Easy, done and dusted.
However, in NA, this is not easily legal. The organization has to be involved in lots of micro deals. But the organization fears that it will dilute its brand through several sponsored posts and if even their assets (players) will follow through.
Why Organizations fail to find sponsors for these players
Dota 2 as a game in NA is harder to sell as the demographic are not as involved in Dota 2 as they are in CS:GO and League of Legends. So it is easier to find sponsors for these players leaving the Dota 2 players without one. For these organizations, finding content creators who are used to sponsors are easier to find as many NA Dota 2 players do not have a personality which might be useful as an asset for the sponsors.
Dota 2 content (leaving behind guides and highlights) dies on Youtube. There are a handful of channels who are doing well but not so well comparatively to their earlier years. So it is harder to find extra assets for their players through content creators.
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NA players failure to establish their personality
NA players rarely use social media, and they fail mostly to tweet out naturally and timely. This makes it harder for the sponsors to confirm that NA players as assets will be profitable.
That is not the only problem. NA Dota 2 players as well as personalities are notoriously racist and sexist in their social media. They also behave very unwell in their streams, running and feeding down mid, Peru complaints (racist), use of words like "simp", "cuck" and more. They also rage and make racist comments against South American players.
This makes them very bad for sponsors as they would not be seen in a positive light within the community.
The Solutions to everything mentioned above
Finding Talent agencies
Talent agencies take in high volume clients (players with more followings) and deals and assets get paid by the activations (sponsors) you do.
Finding multiple agencies would also be very profitable as you are provided with more deals.
Agents earn their own commission, and players can also fund a manager that can tweet for them.
Using large organizations for Bootcamp sponsors
Large organizations like Redbull, betting sponsors, Cloud9 or PC companies can fund bootcamps when it is essential for players. This will also be possible only if NA players build their brand (Tweet regularly, be decent in social media, interact with agencies).
NA players need to be more well-behaved and improve their social image amongst the community. This would make them potential assets for sponsors and also be seen by organizations as profitable.
Repeated accusations of sexual harassment and racial slurs won't help the scene grow.
Increasing their presence in social media would also be better as talent agencies handle high volume clients with more potential for sponsors.
The NA Dota 2 scene has potential but multiple small reasons are responsible for the downfall of the professional scene. The twitter thread was very insightful for the NA Dota 2 scene.
You can find the original twitter thread here: Twitter thread