Speaking of this point Jamie. Say this is a smashing success, and then next year, every major, NT and DGPT event goes this route. I just spent this money for USDGC, and I'm OK with it, but I won't spent 10 an event for all of those next year. Some, sure, all?
Do you think all of those premier pro events can somehow get a singe "Season Pass" package together? If everyone does their own one off paywall, there will be many events that suffer because of it IMO.
Just curious on what you think the next evolution is after USDGC, depending on the success of course.
Pure speculation on my part here, but I would imagine that scenario happens in some fashion. From a business perspective you want to reward your early supporters - it's the impulse buyers that should be paying max rates. Plus, it helps to eliminate variables early on, so if you can trade a discount for early commitment from your core audience you can plan better and be more efficient with your budget. It's a, "help me, help you" kind of scenario.
On that last point - that's why I believe Jomez went strictly to a monthly model on their Patreon. The per-video price allowed for too much fluctuation in income, and now that they have a more consistent schedule throughout the year they can better estimate their costs, so they needed a better estimation of their support level.
First I think I should be clear, I'm pretty much have Charlie's viewpoint that he laid out in The Upshot of let's try it and see how it goes. I think keeping post-production free and next day is actually smart in this case because it creates a lower risk for the live. If something goes wrong with the live, Innova can say sorry, that sucks it didn't work out, but here is two cards available to you for free to watch. Also, I hope it didn't come across as taking a shot at your as I'm a big fan of you and The Upshot and have written to the show a few times (I sent in the question about charging rake for tournaments that you discussed with Sean Jack).
I am all for ppv, and I would be perfectly happy if at some point companies like CCDG and Jomez did next day only for Patreon supporters and then it became free for all a few days or a week later. On DGAM they talked about ppv in other sports, and while I don't watch UFC, I did watch WWF back in the 90s and I remember their ppv structure was something like small events were $20, their bigger events like Summer Slam was something like $30, and WrestleMania I think was 40-50. I be totally in support of live going to a model like that where it is tiered based on the prestige of the event.
Really, everyone just needs to chill out and let companies try new things. Innovation isn't going to happen if we keep trying to do the same things hoping for different results.
Agreed with your last point, I think the superfans are just new to the game, they might even see tournaments/organizers as a monolith because their perspective is almost completely through the lens of being a fan of Jomez (credit to their reach and influence)...and that's where I see most of the complaining coming from. People who watch the USDGC know that nothing is held sacred by the organizers except the existence of the event itself, everything is subject to scrutiny and can be changed.
I will admit that I inserted my opinion without being asked on when to release post production, I don't know if it went up the chain, or if it affected their decision making - but I did advocate for not delaying the Post-Produced content this year. I think, for now anyway, it's two separate audiences and it would have just made both mad.
If it were me, I would eventually bundle all of it under PPV (24 hour access to Post + Live all in one price) and just lean totally into the freemium model, because that solves the problem of "do I like Live? Or Post?" - doesn't matter, you're paying for urgency-of-access, not product type in that scenario. It can all be free after a time delay.
...and thank you for listening and writing in that question! Keep it coming, more mailbag soon when we get some breathing room from the news cycle!
