SpunJ warns CSGO pros to dedicate more effort into their \u201cbrand value\u201d ESL[jwplayer lb2OBWtT]Times have been tough. The world health crisis has forced the esports landscape to adapt, and beloved Counter-Strike: Global Offensive caster Chad \u2018SPUNJ\u2019 Burchill is imploring pro players to do the same. In an impassioned plea on HLTV.org\u2019s \u2018Confirmed\u2019 podcast, SPUNJ veered a bit off the rails from the topic of events\u2019 scheduling during the pandemic to get CSGO players to invest more time in developing their own \u201cbrand power\u201d due to the strain of the time. \u201cI\u2019ve been talking to a lot of players and trying to get them to understand the situation,\u201d he began, showing frustration from having dialogues with people that aren\u2019t trying to optimize their \u201cbrand value.\u201d To SPUNJ this could mean anything from getting better at interviews, amping up efforts in social media, expanding content to different platforms, and more. The problem is that as more events go offline, the more tournament organizers (TOs) have to elongate their competitions online to deliver on some metrics promised to sponsors at the beginning of the year \u2013 even considering the unexpected pandemic. \u201c(If I\u2019m an event sponsor, and the pandemic hits) there\u2019s going to have to be renegotiation for what the value of my money is,\u201d he said. With these extended events, they create more games between the same teams. While this wouldn\u2019t be a problem if fans were genuinely invested in the matchups, the lack of initiative from pros to build up their profiles can make some of these matches pass without a beat. Burchill painted a picture of how everyone from TOs to the staff they employ have all taken a hit because of the times; and pro players are going to quickly feel the impacts next if they don\u2019t adapt. \u201c(Outside of a few exceptions, pro players) have zero (brand power). When you are not playing in an official game, you offer nothing to your organization,\u201d SPUNJ said, noting that the offline era reduces players value to orgs (and sponsors\/partners) since they can\u2019t capitalize off of event signings, fan-meets, and the like to make metrics meet. \u201cWe can either pay you less, and have less tournaments; we can\u2019t pay you the same amount of money for less value, we\u2019re trying to find your value in (these times),\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t understand how in your 24-hour day, you can\u2019t put enough time to balance your f**king life.\u201d While he warns against burnout or creating mental health problems from a busy schedule, he wants pros to do their part in keeping the scene thriving during uncertain times \u2013 ultimately for their own sake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SpunJ warns CSGO pros to dedicate more effort into their \u201cbrand value\u201d ESL[jwplayer lb2OBWtT]Times have been tough. The world health crisis has forced the esports landscape to adapt, and beloved Counter-Strike: Global Offensive caster Chad \u2018SPUNJ\u2019 Burchill is imploring pro players to do the same. In an impassioned plea on HLTV.org\u2019s \u2018Confirmed\u2019 podcast, SPUNJ veered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39025\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}