Don't they care about viewership even more?
Aoe2 has proven high viewership, yet aoe2 isn't getting any sponsoring, except RB. What could be the reason?
I can shed some light on this if you guys are interested. It’s important to keep in mind my experiences may be different from others and I don’t have all the answers.I wonder if anyone has actually reached out to potential sponsors with an offer.
First off, everyone seems to overlook the most important metric when it comes to streaming deals & sponsorships. That is not viewer peak, it is not total views, but instead hours watched. The reasoning for this is simple, sponsors want their ads to be seen as much as possible and for that viewers need to stay. So in theory (pulling numbers outta my ass here) someone getting 5k viewers consistently with longer term watch time is more valuable than someone averaging 2k but occasionally peaking at 10k here or there. This is the main thing streaming platforms and content creators are judged by.
I only have this data for my own content, but I have to imagine AoE2 performs really well in these areas compared to most communities. The game is one you need to pay attention to, and can run on for a great period of time. The problem though, is advertisers want to be seen at a rate that just doesn’t match AoE2. Hard to get your product plugged at proper times when a game can take a full hour, or when the length & times of a set can vary so greatly. Combine this with sponsors always offering “safe” deals regardless (meaning they aim low & assume the worst to ensure the deal is always somewhat profitable) it can lead to offers not being as exciting as one might hope.
I can’t speak for others but I felt constantly undervalued when speaking to sponsors for my events. They straight up did not believe the numbers I projected, or if they did but wanted a million intrusions. For HC4 I wanted huge numbers when it was clear I was at my max from MS (a whole different convo) I went searching, and the BEST offer I got was 25k IF, each Bo5 had video segments, each YT video had sponsored intros, and a bunch of other things that would make the viewing experience way worse. As a creator I wasn’t comfortable making the viewership experience worse to tack onto an already large prizepool. To worsen the viewer quality a streamer would need to pocket a cut to make it “worth it” as well, which would have many meant only 12.5k or 15k towards the prizepool of 70k or whatever.
So in short I think opportunities are out there, but maybe not fitting to tack onto MS prizepools for most creators. MS’s sponsorship is huge for us, the fact we can focus on the event instead of filling ad space is just incredible. I could be wrong on all this btw, just a bunch of theories & stuff from my experience.