marketing, funding, crowd-funding, fundraising, gamingI don’t know if this is the proper place to ask this (New to StackExchange), but I need to know how to fund a tournament.
I’m working on starting tournaments for games online (similar to ESL, FACEIT, etc) where cash prizes are involved. I don’t know how to get the potential winnings. Crowdfunding, Sponsors, etc?
Any answer is appreciated.
Your question is about running tournaments in general, which to me rings more like fan-based things operated as a hobby, or a promotional activity when used by a marketing department. Your examples seem to be about running large scale match-making operations - and I’d gather their operators at least considered throwing in a gambling component - and streaming these games as a source of viewers.
In the first case the answer is sponsors and participation fees. Participants go in there for the thrill, so the prize can be small, with participants covering the better part of the expenses. Note that the experience of participating is what they’re buying, so mind delivering on that. Here’s an example where participants pay a very large fee to play a (historical simulation) game in a medieval castle in Poland.
The second case is much larger scale, and requires infrastructure to stream games to boot. Note that what you’re selling at the end of the day is eyeballs that can watch ads and other sponsored content. Your competition is offering free participation, making it hard for you to charge for the latter. You can still count on sponsors, but they’ll want scale (and results). Your work hypothesis should therefor be that there won’t be much money coming in for a while. And as such your real source of money is the same as that of any other business: personal wealth, VCs, joint-ventures, banks, etc. With enough scale, you’ll eventually attract marketers.
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