As with any change, transitioning from a Tournament Organizer to another is going to come with hiccups and growing pains. The transition to BLAST from Saudi owned ESL/FACEIT is no different. While it’s important to talk about areas where BLAST can or must improve, this doesn’t mean I’m here to trash them forever. I hope when the Majors come I can just as vocally give them the plaudits their production value has previously deserved.
That said, I have one big question:
I touched on it when discussing NA Challenger League’s production previously, but the importance of vods becomes much more important when discussing the premiere level of competitive Rainbow Six. Easy vod access is important for growing new fans, keeping existing fans engaged, and providing teams with the resources they need to scout their competition. (The last point is less important given the consistent release of match replays, but has historically been the only way to review tape)
Vods are the biggest entryway for new fans to encounter an esport. Sure, seeing a big event live on the front page of Twitch is thought of as the most common way to watch a new esport, but there’s not an R6 Major every month. Vods are forever. Always up on Youtube and always with the potential to catch some algorythmic attention.
So no vods of the past weeks matches is problematic. With only the live broadcasts to access, there’s an increased barrier of entry to watch Pro Siege if you weren’t watching it live. I make it sound like sifting through a 9 hour broadcast is hard mainly because it is. This is the attention economy and making it hard for a new or casual fan to find the SSG/SQ match is begging for them to lose interest because its that much easier to watch a 10 minute meme compilation instead.
But it’s not just accessibility that I’m concerned about when it comes to the vods. Another factor is the use of channels like R6Bravo to prevent any scheduling conflicts. Completely understandable from a broadcast perspective, now APAC matches and LATAM matches are being streamed at the same time without delay, but it means some of the broadcasts are not on the main Rainbow Six channels.
That’s a problem because Twitch vods are temporary, they quickly disappear. Given the lack of vods from the past week+ there’s a chance that important Pro League matches will be lost to ether due to not being uploaded to a Youtube channel, especially when it comes to matches only streamed on the less known R6Bravo channel. Kind of like how the last 2.5 days of NA Challenger League and CL Playoffs have been lost to time, preventing anyone from seeing the culmination of RealityTV’s flawless run if they didn’t see it live.
No one wants that to happen to Pro League matches, especially given how much both Ubisoft and BLAST have invested into making this year of Pro League happen. We all want R6 esports to look as good as possible, and having no vods isn’t a good look given 8 years of history that has been (mostly) kept alive. So in the nicest possible way, I’ll ask again: