Interview With the Sponsors behind HDH

That's an interesting story, actually. A lot of my friends got me into Starcraft 2, I wasn't a big RTS players. I got a Beta key, started playing some games, found it to be a good game. I started looking around for something interesting to watch, not casts to sponsor, and I found HDStarcraft and Husky's channel. The thing that got me into it was TLO versus Nony on Metalopolis - a 40 minute nuke fest, that was my introduction to Starcraft 2 shoutcasting.

I never intended to do advertising, I more intended to do something for the community. I loved what Husky and HD were doing with their shoutcasting and I was watching it every single day, and it struck me at one point that I were to be watching this on TV I would be paying for it in some way shape or form. I wasn't paying for this content, and I was primarily watching Husky's channel - I didn't know that he and HD were working together - and so I send Husky a donation. He was totally over the moon as he always is when people are being generous towards him and then I considered to sponsor the tournament he was hosting. I contacted him and it all moved on from there.

Originally, I think that I insisted upon NOT having a sponsor, as I was doing this for personal entertainment reasons but Husky insisted back that the tournament should have a sponsor - you couldn't have a Starcraft tournament without it, he said. It went from there.

Yes, I definitely think the time has come. At least, the first few months after the release of the game (27th July) will show if it has. When I started sponsoring the HDH Invitational I wasn't expecting to receive any return on my investment, I didn't expect the finals to receive 250,000 views by themselves. So, in terms of marketing, I had no expectations. Now, I can see that the HDH videos have received over 2 million views in a week, it seems like an excellent opportunity for companies. As you have seen with the Day[9] vs Tasteless show match, we decided to do some more sponsored games.

In terms of the very big money, and comparing to the existing Korean scene, I think that the Euro-American scene will probably be secluded from Korea. I'm obviously very new to the scene, but I think that Europe and America will form one "game area" and Korea another. Clans will start to appear, we're already seeing it, and we have clan fights. Show matches are good, they're a lot of fun for everyone, but I think team rivalry is the thing that big sponsors really like and demand before investing big money. Just look at World Cup and their teams, they got their rivalries and sponsors and producers love that.