It seems we have some avid Starcraft players here, and one thing that has really struck me is how far the Starcraft community has come in such a short time. The first Starcraft was released in 1998 as a basic computer game, no different from zillions of others. Yet somehow this game took hold, particularly in Korea, and now there is a thriving professional Starcraft circuit. Blizzard, the Starcraft publisher certainly didn't discourage the interest, but they didn't start out expecting to have such a response.

What exactly happened to get from zero sponsorship to significant tournaments in the space of a decade? Was there a lucky break somewhere, are the Koreans just given to gaming crazes (go took off quite suddenly too), or was there something deeper? Anything that the Western go community can take away from the experience?

I recall some really good articles on teamliquid about this but can't seem to find them right now. Teamliquid has some great articles in general you might start with their showcase. This one in particular might interest you. You might find some related information in this post or here.

From what I can remember it was a lot of factors that led to the growth in esports in Korea from the economy to the government supported telecoms to the popularity of internet cafes.

I think Korean culture is more accepting of an intellectual game like Baduk or a computer game like Starcraft being something worth spending time on. Neither one has caught on nearly as much in the West.

But SC2 has had much more success in the West compared to what SC1 managed. While we can't really have a Baduk2, we can take advanage of the other factor leading to SC2's popularity: the increasing capabilities the internet gives us. SC2 as an esport is becoming more popular through the proliferation of livestreams.

We have some of this in Go as well, first with the online Go servers allowing anyone to play despite not having any live opponents. KGS added their KGS+ lectures, eurogotv started livestreaming tournaments, and now having a daily liveshow. It's becoming more common to have Western tournaments broadcasted on a server so people can follow along.

Maybe Go can follow the model of SC2 tournaments, streaming live commentary of the tournament games?

Livestreams and internet broadcasting are helping a lot of smaller broadcasts that target niche audience since it's a lot easier to reach your target audience. There've been some TL and reddit posts about how TV is not the place for esports and I agree; we're doing fine with livestreams and I think internet tv is going to keep growing. It's great to see the huge boom in western esports surrounding starcraft 2 and I hope they continue to grow; with events like NASL & TSL and all the great European events things are looking good. It's amazing the difference between available content from just a couple years ago where I'd be staying up at 3am to watch restreams of the broodwar proleagues and now where there are too many english tournaments to even keep track of.

Abdyos's links had an article with an interesting summary. It may be that the Korean Starcraft phenomenon can be traced back to the Asian currency crisis. It seems there were a lot of unemployed young men at the time hanging out in Internet cafes putting resumes together and checking their email.

Of course after the email and resume printing was done they still had time on their hands, and they hung around playing Starcraft. It built enough of a critical mass that advertisers showed up, and after that things progressed naturally.

To my mind, Western go won't take that trajectory until advertisers decide that the go market is interesting. That really means delivering eyeballs from an interesting target demographic.

This is already being done certainly, although not as much in the Western scene. For instance, on Tygem or Cyberoro during broadcasts, they will get a pro who will type in commentary as the game (usually top board) is being played live.
I think another concern is how Go can be delivered to the masses in a package that's exciting and fun to watch. I am passionate about both games, but I find this far more exciting to watch than this.

Good point, and yet somehow the poker community managed to make their televised games interesting. I'm not sure poker is an inherently more interesting spectator sport than go, but the sports networks manage to find a reason to broadcast a lot of poker. We must be doing something wrong...

Hm, I guess both in StarCraft and in Poker you can reveal something to the audience (movements of the other player / cards) to put it kind of ahead of the players. There's more to anticipate then, I think. E.g. you know this is a bluff and you will search the face for a tell or laugh at the opponent to fall for it. Same thing might apply to StarCraft, you can see what the players are planning.

In Go it is much more abstract. Everything is in the heads of the players. The only thing one can provide is live-review at a Demo-board. But that's not quite the same, I think. It's mere explaining why the players did something and guessing what they hope for, but it's harder to anticipate or feel for it, because you don't know if one player prepares a trap of some kind or has the better cards.

Hard to grasp, but I think it comes down to the fascination of yelling at the TV "Don't go up the stairs! There's the killer!". You simply can't in Go, because you'll never know.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Poker can be televised because of the gambling side.. In particular large amounts of money can be won with a very small initial stake.

Tournament poker takes a short time to learn and there are lots of emotions involved. Throw in some good looking commentators and you've got a show..

Although you can bet on go.. the problem is that Jo public really wouldn't have a clue what was happening. In my experience, having played about two hundred games now.. I have simply gone from not knowing why I lost to not knowing how I won...

The learning curve for go is way too steep..