Analysing the Talent System within Australia

With Esports Talent, Australia is an interesting place given that Australia is one of the areas with a sparse population. It has provided the greatest talents in UberShouts, Spunj, MC, Elfishguy and various others.

However, from an Esports Business perspective, it is a very tough case given the lack of financial backing from that sparse population. So how do we produce so much great talent with very little?

With Inmaniac’s recent response to Jason, it provides a greater clarity and he also introduces the system that he used for ESL Australia. Josh Inman (Inmaniac) used to be both broadcast talent and also the General Manager for ESL Australia.

Choosing Talent is not measured on knowledge of a particular Esport. It is measured on how you are able to follow direction, production can trust them to run a good show and they hit all the beats that are required. Running a good event is paramount.

If you have talent that can dabble across multiple esports, it is even better as you can convert it to a full-time position and keep them around for longer. A lot of talent quit due to it not being worth it in a financial sense especially in Australia.

It is mainly due to having no consistent schedule of events within Australia. Unlike Europe, North America and Asia, you are not guaranteed with an event in Australia.

With my main specialisation in CS2, the main leagues that we have is essentially LPL and ESEA. We do not get a guaranteed Major tournament here. We’re lucky if we get 2 in a year like 2023 (IEM Sydney / ESL Challenger Melbourne).

But what are the positives or negatives of such a system?

The Positives

The main positive is that you have full-time or part-time professional talent when you need it most for a big event. You need to be able to keep people employed and interested in being talent otherwise it’ll be a revolving door like most ESEA Open teams’ rosters.

It may be the same set of 10–12 people doing every event for certain games and genres. You’re not doing a recruitment drive for every event.

It can be exhausting teaching new talent everything for every single event. It also avoids potential gaffes on air such as swearing, disparging sponsors and much more.

If the Tournament Organisers see dysfunction especially in the local scene. They are just going to fly their talent in. This could also lead to less events in Australia since it would be more expensive compared to holding the event in Europe or North America.

They want the show and production run smoothly so they want people with experience. With ESL Challenger Melbourne, they had to really push for the desk to be in Australia.

Whether the desk would be in Australia for the next ESL Challenger will be most likely decided by ESL in Europe. (I’m not looking too positively about whether we would have a desk).

To narrow it all down, the main positive is consistency. Australia needs to have high quality talent for its own survival. It doesn’t have the abundance of tournaments, money and players that Europe or North America does.

This is why you see very few new talent and a lot of talent who have been working events for 5+ years. It is the exception not the norm to be a new talent.

The Negatives

The big negative is obviously the lack of newer talent. It is incredibly hard to break into the broadcasting industry especially for Australia in CS2.

For newer talent, it often feels that the end goal is unachievable or not worth it. Especially when the newer talent work harder and have a greater feel/knowledge of the game compared to some of the other casters.

The worst part is generally when they see people who already friends with the current talent getting a go over them. It leaves them incredibly jaded with the industry overall.

Nepotism can be seen as a problem within the industry as it can keep quality people out due to personal differences. However, you are going to have to eventually work with these people so you don’t want personal differences impacting the show.

This is where having unfortunate run-ins with people especially decisionmakers can turn Nepotism into a huge issue. You could be essentially risking your career if you stand up for yourself in certain instances.

For example, let’s take it that you casted for an entire season for ECL and during the playoffs, you decide to cast the best game (FlyQuest v Rooster). However, another known talent who hasn’t casted any of it comes in and puts their name on it.

This is where that dilemma arises because you’ve casted the entire season, you may feel that you’ve worked hard enough for it. For a known talent to put their name on it and knowing they’ll garner the viewership.

It puts you into a position to either switch to another game or have two English casters on one game (while the 3 others have nobody on it). Kick up a stink isn’t an option because you’re upsetting the apple cart and it’ll only end badly for you.

The last one which comes with Nepotism is that casters some will lose their drive to gain knowledge about their respective teams and scenes. They believe that their position is safe because the objective isn’t about having full knowledge of the esport that you’re casting. It is about being able to follow the direction of production.

You can see signs of this occuring where a talent who was previously incredibly active in the grassroots scene suddenly casts less and less.

The Analysis

Overall, the strengths far exceed the weaknesses because survival of your esports industry is way more important than people missing opportunies. If a few people miss out on an opportunity means nothing compared to having no event in general.

If you spread the opportunities out between all the talent then nobody will want to become full-time talent. There are not enough opportunities in Australia to support more than 10–12 part to full-time talent.

With no full-time talent, you don’t have consistency and stability that international or domestic Tournament Organisers need. It is an extreme vote of no confidence if you’re recuriting for casters every event.

Be aware that you may feel that the system could be against you but it is not DESIGNED to be against you. Its objective is to keep the scene alive and allow for international opportunities for domestic talent.