it's a great subject to talk about - what will kill it is not being able to sell a great product or not getting enough cash coming in to maintain the costs.
do we need the studio? not really, it's a huge cost to sit here empty most of the time and be my day to day office. i could just work from home and go back to hiring a conference room 3 - 4 times a year. but, we end up spending close to what that would cost on rent for the year. everything is packaged away and needs to be set up every time and then packed down. there is a lot of value in just being able to turn off the lights and lock the door after every event.
have we picked up enough work be sustainable? not yet and im down to my last dollary bucks. im hustling and trying to get some more money in the door but the fact of the matter is and you said it in the video, Australia is expensive, so i can't just do it for the exposure or pay people in headsets - that doesn't work anymore. so when it comes down to it, we need cash but im also not going to under value what we do.
If the min signing deal is $10k, im not going to sell that same spot to another sponsor for $5k because they can't see themselves spending more. I'd rather just chuck $5k in of my own money and call it a day. I also don't want to be 100% of someones marketing spend because you are not going to get the immediate value out of the events. it wont result in immediate sales, what you are buying is brand positioning, subliminal marketing and having people get hands on with your products for direct feedback.
so with all that said, will CS OCE esports be alive in 5 years? maybe, if things do not change in the next 12 - 24 months, no. well, there won't be a studio anymore atleast. DFRAG will still exist in an online capacity and we will just end up doing events at like Fortress in Syd and Mel but in the 1 year the studio has been here I'm not seeing many indicators to see otherwise.
but i have to say, for bigger positioned VRS events in AU, we're starting to see ANZ Champs numbers return, maybe not domestic numbers but globally the numbers are there. But that's another issue we haven't sold - how can IEM Melb sell out in record time but we can't find those same people to watch domestic CS?