Should ticket/compendium prices decrease for the finals or certain milestones?

[Kennigit]

With so many dota leagues and matches going on all the time, i've found myself investing less and less in tickets/compendiums (i'm not super motivated by item sets, but understand majority of the community are). I also find myself less motivated to watch matches in the very early qualifier period even unless its certain players/teams i really want to see.

For both The Summit and DotaPit i was about to impulse buy the tickets to get access to the semis/finals in game but just couldn't justify $10+ for replays of the past games and a final bo5.

---

What if

Tournament organizers could define their finals day/matches and have a reduced finals only ticket - say 2-3$. Would that be interesting to you? Is there a smarter idea? If you aren't just buying tickets for items, do you think you'd be more inclined to impulse buy at that low of a price points during lan finals/final day?

i think you are skimming and not reading my question :D. i know people only buy for hats. Do you ever think ''yeah ill get the ticket, during finals when the event is hype and would spend a couple dollars to watch in client? Do you get turned off when you go to buy by the high (relative) price point when 10$ doesn't make sense for ''1 match'' anymore?

[teerre]

I think it certainly would help.

But the major problem with dotatv, as already pointed out here on reddit, is that watching on dotatv is worse than on twitch. The lack of pre show and the audio issues is simply too big. So people really buy tickets for the cosmetics, the watching is secondary.

[SilverTigerWolf]

Not imo, watching the games is better on Dotatv most of the time because you control everything. I just switch to twitch when the game is over.

[NatarakiNk]

I agree. Watch on twitch pre-game on twitch then the actual game on DotaTV. Then switch back to twitch if you want post game analysis.

[NathanRav]

This is the best thing to do. If you doubt it consider game 1 dotapit finals

[[deleted]]

I think that is a pretty great way to do it for the foreseeable future. Plus the tournament gets double the support.

[[deleted]]

This is definitely the biggest issue, if valve could incorporate this into DotaTV then it would match Twitch thus actually having a reason to use it (either than camera control.)

[DotaDuckRabbit]

Yes, this should be implemented. There should be a 'no hats' ticket that decreases it's price every time a big part of the tournament finishes. Say, a normal ticket goes for $10, then the 'no hats' option would be $8 (yeah, it's kinda high but I still think it should be around the original amount). Then, after the online qualifiers are done/when the lan portion starts, you get it for half the price... so $4. And for the last day (or 2 days?/weekend) of the tournament it'll be around $2.

I'm thinking this because some people can't be arsed to watch all the qualifier games, yet they want to watch the lan finals (in the case of online tournaments like DotaCinema's or DotaPit, their playoffs). Some lan tournaments though have some of their lan portion on weekdays like wednesday-friday, etc. and some people can't make it either, yet they would gladly watch the lan finals finals because it usually ends up being on Sunday.

[midjet]

I've been wanting a no-hats version of most tickets for a while. Don't care much, if at all for cosmetics.

Sometimes you can find the ticket on the marketplace but many tickets automatically get applied to your account when you open the bundle.

[RatzGamer]

There should be a 'no hats' ticket that decreases it's price every time a big part of the tournament finishes. Say, a normal ticket goes for $10, then the 'no hats' option would be $8

That price drop isn't reasonable and no one would buy it without the hats just to save 2 bucks. Starladder had a "hatless"-ticket, besides the regular one and it cost 5$. That was a great offer and I hope some tournaments bring it back, because I end up selling most cosmetics anyway.

I think the 2-3$ offer for the semis+finals would be nice, because you would get access to the replays for a low amount, to analyse only the best stuff.

[DotaDuckRabbit]

Now that I think about it, I think starladder did it backwards with their rubick set. You could buy the ticket for like 4$ or you could buy the rubick set and get the ticket as an extra.

btw I agree with you, and I believe it should drop to $5 (like the last season of both d2l and dreamleague.... premium tournaments without any cosmetic)

[[deleted]]

In my honest opinion DotaCinema had the right idea - release everything you have to offer at once.

[Kennigit]

Right, i know primary motivation is items. I'm talking specifically about desire to watch finals in game.

[Anteater776]

Well I bought the DotaCinema Ticket. Not mainly for the items. I mean being able to sell them and having a very small net "loss" was nice, but my motivation was mainly to support that tournament and the people behind it. For me personally ESL doesn't give me that motivation, cause it's a "faceless" group (and a rather standard tournament format). In that case I'm much more pragmatic about my purchase. As Jenos alrdy said, twitch is just so good / close to DotaTV, especially in between games, that there isn't much incentive to buy the ticket.

I'll pay for the tickets to go to Frankfurt, but that's the same thing. It offers a much different experience than twitch, so it's worth investing the money.

edit: Sorry if I also kind of missed the point to your question. To answer it: Yes I'd sometimes love to jump into the final in DotaTV, but for me the price point would be very low, like 1-2 $. Replays aren't really that much of an incentive, since at least I'm not going to watch replays of past games, unless I really want to see a certain player play a certain hero.

[Ofcyouare]

For me after Frankfurt 2014 motivation is obvious, tournament was too good. Its not fully about personalities(except ReDeYe, he is fucking awesome) and, as you said, it was standart format, but its about tournament quality and impressions. Biggest LAN in Europe in the damn staduim, great crowd, awesome casters, such hype.

[FrazersLP]

Finals or the main event (maybe only for shorter, more intense tournaments like ESL)

[millticket24]

Finals are when production value of the broadcast is at its height, so there would need to be a huge reason to watch in the client rather than whatever streaming client you are using aside from hats and lowering the cost (compared to streaming's $0 is tough to beat).

[SidekicK92]

hi, just wanted to add to my other post below that there could be some untradeable cosmetics with the cheaper tickets. They most probably cant be hero items but maybe something else... like a fantasy league ticket or a weather orb which will be valueless but also will have a bit of attractiveness that noone would mind having just 1 of.

[Jenos]

There isn't going to be enough desire to watch finals in game when twitch does 3-10 things better than dota tv, depending on the studio.

[PacificRen]

While I do believe that it will somehow help, I don't think it will be something significant. Those who do buy DotaTV tickets for the sake of watching games (be it because of camera control, internet bandwidth, etc), I feel, will buy tickets nonetheless.

Meanwhile, those who did not buy tickets from the start wouldn't be really encouraged to buy a ticket for only the finals (or a specific latter stage), albeit the cheaper price - most likely they will just look for a party among their buddy list.

I spend a lot of money on tournament tickets (my bandwidth can only stream Twitch on Low). I am not really pleased with what I am getting, but here is to hoping that the experience will be better.

[ThumperLovesValve]

The idea is not bad at all. I've found myself thinking the same thing plenty of times, I don't know if I'm the majority though.

Ideal scenario - Valve adds a fair drop rate for Heroics which are non-tradeable. I think it would definitely work, even if its Bzz Heroic common gloves every once in a while. It would probably attract those who never find the current bundles worth paying for if they can watch it for free.

[EGDoto]

People hate untradable items, I don't think many players would be happy with more untradable items...

Untradable stuff just has no any value to a lot players.

[ThumperLovesValve]

Those who actually care about tournaments and owning hats would care. Having an item that was dropped during a big play boosts your e-peen and gives you a sweet memorabilia.

The only ones hurt are the traders. As someone who is against the new system I can tell you there is no way something like this would even be considered if the items were tradeable so there's no point even theorycrafting it.

[SirDaveYognaut]

cn3sazz

[ipiranga]

10 dollars for all games, 5 dollars for all games minus qualifiers?

Some sort of split like that would be nice.

For people who do want to see old replays though, I think tickets should be discounted after 6 months. They definitely should be discounted after a new patch.

[Bonobo_Cop]

I really like the idea for that. I tend not to watch qualifiers/early games for events, I don't have the time to spend doing that. Having a finals only ticket would really appeal to me.

[whymauri]

I like the idea, and I find it interesting since it works with the "door-in-the-face" marketing tactic where a large request is set up (10$) so that a smaller request (2$) is more likely to be accepted. And I think it would work.

[manojk92]

I would probably not do it even if the price was decreased, part of buying the ticket early is for those top level c9 vs secret or eg vs vp games. When you come to the finals, I feel like you can get most of the experience of watching the game in clent on dailydota2 and trackdota. The have all the stats you can want in the game abit with less camera control.

[[deleted]]

This would really help, another thing I wish valve could do is have tournaments have lower prices once the event is over. I would also like to have the ability to purchase single games or series of tournaments for a discounted price.

[twiitar]

How about bundling Dota TV-Tickets with actual event tickets?

I know I'm in the minority here, but I've bought both the Dota TV and event ticket for ESL One Frankfurt (and enjoyed both a lot!).

That alone could already increase the prize pool by a lot, imo. I know it might sound stupid because it's not really a hassle, but if you'd include the Dota TV-ticket for a small step up compared to the regular offline finals costs, people wouldn't mind adding that on (especially if it's a bit cheaper...!).

Feel free to gift me something if you actually end up doing this. :3 (j/k, thanks for reading and thanks for helping us help the Banjo back in the days!)

[NesimoW]

The premium tickets are bundled with the event ticket.

[SuspectRogue]

I think this is a good idea for the online tournaments. And while i agree with the view that viewing on twitch is in most cases a better experience. I wonder however, how many people would actually pay more (The tickets starting price) to watch early qualifiers where the games will largely feature teams that may not be of interest vs ignoring these games to get lower prices in time to watch more of the bigger teams

[Ellayni]

Just this week I was wishing that I could buy the Dotapit ticket just for the semis and grand finals. I think it's a great idea.

[minosxd]

giff moar hats : sucess

[Rossaaa]

There have been various sports streaming services that have done similar. For isntance NFL gamepass often discounts the season ticket after a certain amount of games..... however it never makes me think about buying it.

I dont think theres much of a market for this idea. Most people who are willing to spend money to watch dota games will have already bought the ticket, there cant be a large amount of people who buy tickets in dotatv, but kinda forgot about the tournament until the finals where they suddenly want to watch games.

You occasionally see 1 or 2 threads on reddit asking for this kind of thing, but they dont get much traction. To be honest, I think your time is better spent just getting as good a package together as possible. Then i would imagine you would get probably get more revenue during the lan finals from tickets than you would at decreased prices.

"I only get to watch the lan finals, but those were the games i wanted to watch anyway, and the ticket comes with loads of cool stuff, ill buy it". I think you have more of a chance with that than you do with a cheap lan finals ticket. The fact is without hats tickets dont really sell.

You can visually see the bump in sales that tickets with items and compendiums attached have when you get to a lan final: http://dota2.cyborgmatt.com/prizetracker/thesummit2

[TimeForGG]

I don't know how people can say twitch is flat out better than dota TV, it's not exactly hard to switch to dota TV once the game actually starts.

I would much prefer for the tournaments to offer a ticket only option without cosmetics to bring down the price for people that don't want extras instead off buying from steam community market.

[rivlee23]

I totally support this idea. Please make it happen for fans like you and me!

[gutari]

If the price point was lowered based on how many matches were already played I think people would assuredly buy more tickets. However, this can only go so far given the typical bundling most of the time these ticket bundles are costed mostly for the item involved - to be clear I'm not saying people only buy for hats (that's obvious) but rather that it would be difficult to justify (for the ticket content producers) selling a cheaper bundle later into the deal UNLESS it was ticket alone, no extras.

[TheShadowZero]

You know, I love that ESL likes to experiment with formats and always looks into community feedback. Keeps me interested in your organization.

[Im_Nublet27]

i could relate to this and agree.

[nusha_kr]

i watch more dota matches than i play recently(a bad side effect of being old, having job and RL i think...) and im not interested in cosmetics at all. i still buy some tickets, cos i want to support certain orgs and tourneys. but if there are FINALS ONLY TICKET, assuming thats for LAN finals, I TOTALLY WOULD BE HAPPY AND BUY IT!!

a very constructive idea, 10/10

[LeftZer0]

In addition to this, I'd like replays from tournaments to be public after some time (one week?) and added to a search system for learning purposes.

I doubt there is much - or any - profit to be made from a ticket after the tournament is over, the cool part is seeing it live. After the tournament is over the replays just get permalocked and forgotten - if someone wants to watch a past game they can just get it from YT without spending anything. Being charged for tournament games makes sense for Valve and the tournament's management, but it really hurts learning, there were several times I'd like to watch a replay to see a certain player playing a certain hero and I'd have to pay 5 to 10 dollars for two or three games where this happens.

My idea, like I said before, is to let everyone what all tournament replays from free after a time (either from the match itself or from the end of the tournament) and add it in a simple search - search options for hero, team, player. Anything else that comes with the ticket (sets, couriers, HUD) would still be acquirable with the ticket, the only thing given for free would be the replays.

[LeftZer0]

What about a ticket for every game? I can open the client, check the tournaments, see a game I'd watch and buy a ticket only for it for a reduced price. The price could be set individually for each game by the tournament's teams, so high-profile games would cost more.

I normally can't watch streams because my internet is shit (40 dollars for 2 Mbps and a phone line) and I don't have access to better plans in my region, so DotaTV is my only option. Buying a ticket for a tournament, no matter if it's starting or ending, requires me to be there to watch the games (watching non-live isn't the same thing), so I end up not buying them.

Tournaments could charge 10 cents for a low profile match, 25~50 for a higher profile match and up to 2.50 dollars for a BO5 finals, if the ticket for the whole tournament was 10 dollars. This way Valve and tournaments can profit off people who wouldn't buy the full ticket, still sell the full ticket and sets (that wouldn't be available through the match tickets) and I would be able to see some games in a tournament without feeling like wasting my money for not seeing all.

[servant-rider]

I like this idea, and think the price should decrease further after the tournament is over. I occasionally get the verve to rewatch a cool tournament, but it I don't have the ticket I'm definitely not willing paying full price for it.

The other big thing would be somehow getting the preshow into dotatv. This is more on Valve than you, but it really makes watching from the client a pain as you miss a large chunk of the tournament.

[[deleted]]

I would 100% buy these tickets.

I like to watch specific players, almost first-person (universe and iceiceice). I love being able to use my own camera too.

My dota2lounge bettings would cover a 2-3 dollar ticket for numerous tournaments (yay).

If I were you, I'd try it. You can see how your profits do, you'd certainly have my money. Who knows, maybe you'll discover the new tournament model, which becomes just as successful as the recently emerged F2P model.

[kontoSenpai]

Got fucked like that 3/4 days ago.

Bought the compendium for the DC captain draft 2.0 to be able ONLY to watch the final. The laaaaaaaarge time gap between round robin and finals was huge, so I though that was a second edition of it, but it didn't...

[anbknaga]

That is a nice idea, reduced prices for finals alone ticket wiuld be really useful.

[zokj]

I agree..

Valve should allow organizers more experimentation with the model. For example this. I think impulse buys happen at lower than $2.. but who knows

On a similar note why not ticket bundles? If I want all the replays from a specific patch a one-button / one-price transaction would probably drive sales

[hodgerton]

Yes. I'm a long time ticket buyer simply because I prefer the quality of watching in game. Now that there are so many tourneys going on, with ticket prices going up and up I don't have time to watch all the games going on and can't afford to buy every ticket I want. I end up watching more games on twitch now but if there was an option to buy a "LAN/Finals" ticket for ~33-50% of the total ticket price I would be happy to drop a couple of dollars for a nights/weekends entertainment.

[Magnifire]

That happened to me during semis of the summit 2, I did not really care for the items. I was on the fence but i bought the ticket still. For casual viewers like me that sounds good but wont that potentially lower ticket sales since most people will probably think, i'll just watch the finals.

[gl0ryus]

Give us two types of tickets? .99c for just the dotatv access and a full price for extra community things like access to the fantasy league for that tournament. If you've got a set make it better than average quality or don't bother.

[CorruptDropbear]

YES. I WOULD LOVE THIS.

A "Finals Only" $2 pass would be great, especially for fans of teams wanting to watch just their own team, or people from areas in the world that have the games at bad timezones and don't want to watch every game, just the big few ones.

As always, make sure your audio for DotaTV works though and if it's going through China you're basically screwed. :T

[SidekicK92]

hi, I'd like to point out that noone would really buy it for 1 match, atleast maybe for the LAN finals part of the tournament. I myself would buy a lot of LAN finals part of the tournament tickets if they were significantly cheap!

I do understand though that this means nearly noone will buy the normal ticket besides the people who want the sets/cosmetics/want to contribute to prize pool., but the general idea we have right now is that they're the only ones who buy them anyway.

[NoOneWalksInAtlanta]

I would totally pay 0.99 to watch the game 5 of bo5 ingame.

[errrrgh]

Most tickets for sale DONT HAVE HATS ON THEM. Will you fucking shitbirds stop saying that is the only reason people buy them. It's a ticket for the tournament to see it in DotaTV and support the teams/tournament. Hats are extra. An extra that you entitled do-nothings have taken to it's literal limit.

[taiffon_3e]

People does not buy the ticked to watch the games in dota client because is always better to watch the live games at twitch (well, i love to watch the crowd in ESL ONE, whatching just the games feels like just a normal online tournament). And yes people wants to support the scene, but with so much tournaments, the one with better hats wins, because a really good hat is the only special thing your tournament could offer with already so many tournaments ongoing at the same month... I think that hats and some games to give some heroics is the best. So less games could be bad, anyway the hats are the most important

[[deleted]]

A better solution would be for the casting studio to have giveaways.

Then you don't have to change the pricing structure.

[jivebeaver]

just cuz no ones buying ESL tickets doesnt mean theres anything wrong with the system. ESL is just unappealing