Home Gaming How you can help improve eSports coverage

How you can help improve eSports coverage

4 min read
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After ranting a little bit about why eSports coverage in South Africa sucks I’ve gotten a great response from gamers and companies and many questions about how it can be improved. So I thought I’d share some of that before I start my weekend And by start my weekend, I mean slip into a 48 hour coma.

Be awesome

The local community whether casual and competitive is a crucial part of eSport coverage success in our country. If you don’t show support, then no one will invest in it and it will go nowhere. If you don’t contribute, the country will stay uneducated. So here are some things that you can do to help:

  • Comment on articles.
  • Respond to journalists.
  • Tip us off! If there’s anything you think newsworthy, send me an email or message. If you aren’t sure if it is, ask.
  • Be thorough. If you send a journalist a message, give sufficient information, add links to websites, and be precise.
  • Don’t type like a 6 year old. Even though this is the internet, we are still people with brains. Use full words and sentences that make sense. You don’t have to have a language major, just the ability to speak, y’know, like you speak to your family or friends in real life.

An invitation

I’d like to invite all gamers and clans to let me know about what they are doing. Here are the things I’m interested in:

  • Live streaming and shoutcasting – I’d like to help spread the word, so let me know when you do these things.
  • Training programs – however small you think they are.
  • Clan profiles – if you think your clan is worth a profile, contact me.
  • Independent tournaments.
  • Informal tournaments.
  • Big matches – if you know about or will be playing in a competition match that you would classify as a high profile match, contact me.
  • Match reports – if you want to share what happened in your tournament game, chat to me about it. You don’t have to write a formal report, just let me in on what happened and give some insight.
  • Predictions – if you think you can make some good predictions of what the results of games or tournaments will look like, this is a great discussion to pose to the community.
  • Community history – for those of you who are veterans on the competitive scene and think you have a good story to tell about it, let’s tell that story.
  • Brag about yourself! If you think you have achieved something big as a team or player, that’s wroth a story too.
  • Interviews – clan and player interviews are always welcomed.

Companies and tournament organizers

The biggest problem is finding information that makes sense when it comes to tournaments or competitions. Organizers can do the following to help:

  • Press releases – I know that not every one has a talent or liking for writing, but it would help if you can email journalists about your event or tournament with sufficient information. Something more than date, time, and entry free. Tell us about the event or competition.
  • Be available for questions about it.
  • Posting results in formats that the public can understand or an explanation of them would help a lot.
  • Reports – if you’ve had an event or competition, let us know what happened, give us something more than just scores.
  • LANs – tell us about the LANs that you are hosting.

Companies sometimes wonder how they might get involved in helping the community, here’s some direction:

  • Sponsorship – if you are interested in sponsoring a clan or team, you can head on over to the Do Gaming League website for a decent database. Once you are there, look for a game of interest, and go to the relevant leg or stage. From there on, you will find diviwsions, look for teams in the Premier and First division, these are typically teams who are serious about competitive gaming and willing to commit. If you’ve clicked on the team name, it will take you to the clan page, where you can decide whether you’d like to sponsor the team or clan as a whole.
  • What teams need in sponsorships – typically, teams can do with bandwidth, team kits (shirts etc) and gaming gear or hardware. Some teams are willing to travel for tournaments too, and might not always have the money to do so.
  • Event sponsoring – if you are looking for events to sponsor, like LANs, contact me and I can direct you to the right people.

So that’s all of it off the top of my head. If I’ve missed anything or you have any suggestions, please share your thoughts.

For everything else, contact me here:

Email: Yolanda@lazygamer.net
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/Lolita_za
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lolitaZA

 

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Last Updated: March 8, 2013

10 Comments

  1. Sir Rants-a-Lot Llew

    March 8, 2013 at 14:34

    You really are putting in a lot of effort with this. I hope it all starts to help with growing awareness a bit!

    Awesome sauce!

    Reply

  2. jGLZA

    March 8, 2013 at 15:11

    If the relevant companies and clans read this it will be a big help! Thanks Yolanda.
    🙂

    Reply

  3. Colin Webster

    March 8, 2013 at 17:06

    Before clans expect a company to start sponsoring them, the clan should first look at what they can do to support themselves. This is a basic principle, because, if you are not interested in looking after yourself, no-one else wikll look after you.

    TThus a clan should have a structure, it should also have a revunue stream (like membership fees) independent of the sponsorship in order to build up a ‘war-chest’, and should look at ways of tapping into National Lottery Funding.

    The National Lottery may fund recognised clubs up to R200,000.00 per year. This makes all other sponsorships pale into insignificance. It is also a great way of growing the economy. If clubs received National Lottery Funding, they would in turn purchase new equipment. That in turn would grow the market, and then companies would have a real reason to sponsor gaming.

    To be a recognised club, the club has to be a member of the national body: the MSSA.

    Reply

    • LagBeast

      March 11, 2013 at 12:35

      SO Colin, who to date from the e-Sports scene has received this 200k ? or
      is this another one of those, buy a ticket and stand a chance of winning
      marketing strategies ?

      Reply

  4. Graeme Selvan

    March 9, 2013 at 17:53

    Microsoft is reading 🙂

    Reply

  5. Edwin le Roux

    March 11, 2013 at 08:49

    Good luck.
    I will do my part.

    Reply

  6. LagBeast

    March 11, 2013 at 12:33

    SO Colin, who to date from the e-Sports scene has received this 200k ? or is this another one of those, buy a ticket and stand a chance of winning marketing strategies.

    Reply

  7. VnR.XaXas

    March 14, 2013 at 15:15

    Great read, have to agree with Llew Yolanda, teams appreciate the effort you put in on this! Exposure is never an easy thing to achieve! Keep it up!

    Reply

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