Spot on. Even other gamers think this way about ‘pro’ gamers. So it’s pretty hard to build a fanbase.

All the networking expertise in the world won’t sort out a community if the core activity is completely unprofitable.

That’s the real issue here, not the random scandals I’ve read about in these columns.

Pro sports are profitable because they are entertaining to watch. Come up with a format that is also entertaining to watch and you might start to build something.

The other issue I see is that the games that people choose to build competitive tournaments around are also very unpopular games amongst the bulk of the game-buying public. This reduces the size of the audience. Why would someone who doesn’t play Street Fighter or StarCraft want to watch a Street Fighter/StarCraft tournament? They have nothing to relate it to.

“Hey, everyone! We’re having a SC2 competition next week! $10 entry fee for players. $2 beers for spectators!”

Suddenly, Australia loves StarCraft.

e-sports don’t need politicians help to get going. I doubt the growing e-sports scenes around the world have had assistance from politicians.

I would say the bigger problem is some people’s perceptions of gamers. nerdy, anti-social losers who sit in their parents basements practicing. no one who thinks this of the main players of the sport are going to watch the sport.

I’d imagine it would largely be a numbers problem. While we’d have a close, strong community here, the numbers and then within those numbers, the representation of people who could provide decent enough ROI for a sponsor would be quite small. Strictly speaking from a SC2 scene, there’s probably like 2-3 people that could do this, Mafia and Pig (perhaps TargA).