Siphs

So many people piggybacking this post to doomerpost about esports. NBA annual salaries in the early days hovered around 4-5k annually, they stayed flat until the ABA merger in the 70s before the league hit its stride. NHL salaries were flat, exploded, then they lost an entire season in 2004 from a lockout which resulted in a 39 mil salary cap that has taken 20 years to grow to where it is today. MLS in the 90s had paltry salaries and the league almost closed in the early 2000s with multiple teams folding. All 3 of these leagues followed the same trend: early speculative investment —> reality check —-> sustainable growth Yes, if you are a player, broadcast talent, etc. in the current environment you should not be chasing esports as an answer to a career and hedging your bets through education/trade school. It also helps to get some AI or digital career certs. The doomposting about esports as a concept is wild though. This has happened with most major sports, and esports is correcting much faster than those sports have in the past. Esports is not going to disappear. It’s going to be a tough environment to work in while it solves itself. Some regions will adopt and scale faster than others obviously. We are in the early years, there were early winners (players, org founders etc.) who made mad money off of these speculative investments, and many are still chasing this that don’t understand the whole picture, but as esports specific problems get worked through (IP usage, lack of ticket revenue for orgs, lack of media rights), you will see the space start to stabilize. We are literally just now starting to untangle franchising.