Bitcoin Forum

"esports" - a massive new industry that has sprouted up over the last couple years in the US and Europe is starting to take notice of Bitcoin.

SC2BTC.com (http://SC2BTC.com)  and Dead.Gaming are hosting the first of many Starcraft 2 tournaments with Bitcoin prize pools.

This one started at 8pm CET and is streaming now here:
http://www.twitch.tv/deadgaming (http://www.twitch.tv/deadgaming)

Some pretty good players I think (edit: 3 "Grandmasters" top 200 in Europe).  Here's the updating ladder:  http://challonge.com/sc2btc_196203 (http://challonge.com/sc2btc_196203)

One reason Bitcoin will catch on here is that payments for these types of tournaments have taken sometimes months to process and pay out. Bitcoin is ideal for this market.

I am currently watching and we will be streaming for a couple hour forward :D

How many BTC are they playing for?

Woah interesting

Very nice find!

i have added this site to www.thebitcoinreview.com (http://www.thebitcoinreview.com) - http://www.thebitcoinreview.com/site.php?site_id=774 (http://www.thebitcoinreview.com/site.php?site_id=774)

I hope you don't mind evoorhees, i put a comment for this site in your name

About 25 BTC, the prize pool is 55 euro in Bitcoins :) First place gets 45 euro second 10 euro and third place 5 euro in BTC :)

Thank you very much for adding us :)

I had/have this same exact idea :D. Glad to see it in production!

This is sounds like a killer app for Bitcoin. Actually, I think Bitcoin as a gamer's currency is much more viable than as a real-life currency (for now).

Thanks for the update.

Are there any videos of the tournament?

Yes there is, though it's unedited straight from the stream so you might have to skip some parts when the streamers are waiting to go into a game :)

http://www.twitch.tv/deadgaming/b/300416297

This is a great way to publicise bitcoin to a target market who would really get it. I would donate bitcoin to sponsor a well-organised competition prize.

Indeed, We believe that Bitcoins and Esports are perfect together and that the gamers are a good target for advertisement of bitcoins. We are looking to host several more tournaments within the CryptoCrush series as well as to start doing a couple of other lower league tournaments in the future once we have this series running. DeaD.Gaming also have a pro team which we are looking to send to a couple of LAN events, it would be lovely if they could be sponsored by and represent a couple of bitcoins companies. At the moment our website is down but we still have our forums up, so check our forums at www.deadgaming.net where you can find all the information about the clan :D

The first tournament went like a charm, 32 players out of them 3 gm (top 200 Europe), we got a couple of really good games. The stream had a good amount of views keeping in mind that one of the biggest Starcraft 2 events happened at the same time, MLG. We had 274 total views out of those 137 were unique views, we also had a average of 18 viewers and peaked at 32. We are looking forward to the next tournament in 2 weeks time on the 3rd of December. If you want to support our tournament and the clan send a donation to 1KzSmS2QEXCUYYXgv2ymLjMThFhJWL1UuY   :D

If you will manage to add your tournament to teamliquid calendar so it will be shown on right panel I think you should be able to have 100+ viewers all the time

also I got 2nd in this tournament :D

Hah, awesome!

Too bad I have so little time right now. Hell yeah, SC2 tournaments paid in Bitcoin. Only problem? The moment you're big enough, you'll need a Korean translator to talk with the winners. No borders for Bitcoin, mhm. ;)

We are currently launching the official info about our next tournament which will be played on the 3rd of December. For more info check this link out http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=288969#1

Where do the funds come from? If you charged a small number of coins to watch the streams (maybe without ads/with better experience), could you potentially up the prize and create more exciting games with better players? Also, did you consider trying to make it more professional for viewers? I quite enjoyed watching the Blizzard matches played with the alpha builds, they were well directed, had decent commentary, etc. It's probably not enough to just record the matches, good commentating (ideally with two commentators so they can have a real discussion) and good directing are worth paying for.

We are sponsored by the lovely company Crypto x Change :), that's where the fund come from :). SC2BTc are planing on putting up tournament where you pay to join and the total paid adds to the prize pool, they are also working on a lot of other systems to get a good prize pool without anyone funding it.

We will make our best to get more professional, we had a 720p HD stream last time. To stream in 1080p take a lot of expensive hardware as well as a very fast internet, we are working on getting a streamer which can provide this but as it's very few that have the requirements to stream at this quality we have not yet found anyone.

Our current sponsors are two up and coming casters that are still learning how to cast, there for they are not perfect and sometime gets a bit of topic. I am sure as they get better the quality of the casting will increase.

We could offer a VIP service with higher quality streaming/casts in the future but this is expensive to setup but it can be something we could aim for. To offer such a service it would have to be really ace as a lot of the tournament offer very good free streams, for watchers to pay to watch it had to be a really top to notch stream they would pay for.

Thank you for the feedback we will do our best to improve our service :)

We have launched our next tournament :D , check out the second Starcraft tournament with Bitcoin prize pool at http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=288969