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What is the average income of Go players?
http://lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=14487		 Page 2 of 2
Author:  Uberdude [ Wed Sep 06, 2017 3:09 am ]
Post subject:  Re: What is the average income of Go players?
Knotwilg, you make a lot of good points in comparing Go to football and how that affects the wealth of the professional scene, but I don't follow soryuu's point that you agree with (dfan/hyperpape make sense to me). So to be clear:

- OP asks about income of Go players and says there's ~60 million of them, so why isn't pro scene richer.
- Various people talk about the ways money can flow from fans to pros (and related organisations):
- - there's direct flows for teaching (e.g. amateur golfers/tennis players paying low-pros for lessons, not so much with football as most football fans don't play)
- - subscriptions to related media/events, e.g. badukTV for Go player, your football fan with his TV package (and season ticket)
- - sponsorship of tournaments from companies, this is mostly about number of fans rather than their wealth, but some link as mentioned about golf fans being rich so nice audience for luxury goods companies
- - endorsements/adverts by the celebrity players

Then soryuu says
Quote:
I find it very odd that you can mix up professional tournament prize winnings with the total number of Go players in the world. That 60 million figure you quoted do not have access to even have a chance to win the prize money so that's a huge logical fallacy. The prize winnings for amateurs are so low that you would have to win a tournament with couple thousand dollars prize money every month to have a comparable income to a basic job. Also you would probably have to fly around a lot so you are already losing money before you started a tournament.


So because the 60 million Go fans won't win pro tournaments there's a logical fallacy? Where? The size of the fan-base is relevant to the pro scene for reasons above. That your average couch-potato football fan has no chance of winning the Premier League doesn't stop him paying £50/month for his Sky TV, watching adverts, noticing sponsors and so on, so why should a Go fan having no chance of winning the Ing cup stop him seeing adverts, buying a mattress from MLily, paying his local pro for a lesson and so on? (Note I agree watching Go is less fun for most than watching football and the other reasons so it will be much smaller, but disagree with the "fans can't win pro tournament so number is irrelevant to pro scene wealth" argument that seems to have been made.)

P.S. Another factor that I think is quite important for smaller activities like Go is the presence of Go fans in positions of power/influence in potential sponsors, media companies etc. So for Go we got the Lee Sedol vs Gu Li match because Mr Ni, the boss of MLily (a Chinese mattress company) is a big Go fan so stepped up to sponsor it. Go's success in Thailand (loads of players, but not pros) is largely down to the support of Mr Korsak, a successful businessman (CEO of the Thai 7-11 convenience store franchise among other things). The continued high support of Japanese pro titles is I believe in part down to plenty of the old men bosses at newspapers or other companies being Go fans, or at least thinking it is a valuable part of their culture worth preserving even if it is not a great commercial decision. So if more people are Go fans the small chance of some random CEO being a Go fan and being in a position to support the pro scene also increases.
Author:  John Fairbairn [ Wed Sep 06, 2017 5:16 am ]
Post subject:  Re: What is the average income of Go players?
Quote:
Another factor that I think is quite important for smaller activities like Go is the presence of Go fans in positions of power/influence in potential sponsors, media companies etc.


An excellent point, and I would go further and say it is very important. But are we approaching a cliff edge? World titles such as Toyota and Fujitsu and many other tournaments have benefited from CEOs with a personal interest (sometimes indirect) in go but when the relevant person dies, company priorities change and sponsorship drops off if the new CEO doesn't play go and wield personal power - shareholders are now more assertive. Politicians with influence are perhaps more important (the signal example at the moment is General Li Jianchao in China, a former eminence grise in the Politburo). But they die or can fall out of power. Do modern politicians play go? Top bureaucrats have been a major if often overlooked influence in Japan, and less so in Korea. But they retire, and I'm not sure they get replaced by go players nowadays.

I suspect go sponsorship will become much more fractured in future and follow the chess pattern. Pros may still be able to cross the canyon to a high income but via a high-wire rather than a canter across a bridge.

And in those future days, middle-echelon PR and advertising men analysing disposable incomes and spending patterns will probably exert the power of today's upper echelons.
Author:  dfan [ Wed Sep 06, 2017 5:22 am ]
Post subject:  Re: What is the average income of Go players?
John Fairbairn wrote:
Quote:
Another factor that I think is quite important for smaller activities like Go is the presence of Go fans in positions of power/influence in potential sponsors, media companies etc.

An excellent point, and I would go further and say it is very important.

Indeed. The resurgence of world-class chess (and money for it) in the United States in the last ten years is largely due to one man, Rex Sinquefield. (Whether or not this is a healthy situation is another question.)
Author:  Knotwilg [ Wed Sep 06, 2017 6:24 am ]
Post subject:  Re: What is the average income of Go players?
Uberdude wrote:
That your average couch-potato football fan has no chance of winning the Premier League doesn't stop him paying £50/month for his Sky TV, watching adverts, noticing sponsors and so on, so why should a Go fan having no chance of winning the Ing cup stop him seeing adverts, buying a mattress from MLily, paying his local pro for a lesson and so on? (Note I agree watching Go is less fun for most than watching football and the other reasons so it will be much smaller, but disagree with the "fans can't win pro tournament so number is irrelevant to pro scene wealth" argument that seems to have been made.)


There IS a logically fallacy, now that you've eloquently revealed the structure of the discussion before my very eyes, and it's in soryuu's reasoning. Thanks and apologies.

Uberdude wrote:
P.S. Another factor that I think is quite important for smaller activities like Go is the presence of Go fans in positions of power/influence in potential sponsors, media companies etc. So for Go we got the Lee Sedol vs Gu Li match because Mr Ni, the boss of MLily (a Chinese mattress company) is a big Go fan so stepped up to sponsor it. Go's success in Thailand (loads of players, but not pros) is largely down to the support of Mr Korsak, a successful businessman (CEO of the Thai 7-11 convenience store franchise among other things). The continued high support of Japanese pro titles is I believe in part down to plenty of the old men bosses at newspapers or other companies being Go fans, or at least thinking it is a valuable part of their culture worth preserving even if it is not a great commercial decision. So if more people are Go fans the small chance of some random CEO being a Go fan and being in a position to support the pro scene also increases.


Good point too. We indeed see a lot of rich-would-have-been-pele-business-men taking over football clubs, not always to the benefit of the club though, I must say ;)
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