SXSW is running a high-profile Smash invitational © SXSW

This weekend, “Battle of the Five Gods” at the South by Southwest Conference and Festivals (SXSW) will feature 20 of Melee’s best players and a $25,000 prize pot. A month later, Beyond the Summit will run its second rendition of Smash Summit, a four day invite-only event. So far, the growing invitational trend has been great for both viewers and top players - but how does it change our overall community moving forward?

The open bracket structure of Smash majors has been one of its biggest appeals to community growth. Any player has the potential to play against Joseph “Mango” Marquez or Jason “Mew2King” Zimmerman at a national, and larger tournaments such as Evo and Genesis are garnering nearly 2,000 participants. Up and coming players use nationals to gauge their growth, while newer players love the idea of competing in the same bracket as the pros and seeing themselves on stream.

On the flip side, other eSports build their infrastructure around professional players and teams. Large tournaments for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and League of Legends are invite-only, and the process to qualify is rigorous. The end product of these events are exciting; The top teams are all well-prepared to perform at their peak, preparing specific game plans against other pro teams. They have the luxury of being able to focus on a select few players rather than thousands in a random set of pools.

Top Smashers have complained about having to play through consecutive 8-12 hour days at nationals. Upsets are rare in early rounds of pools and are often seen as a formality for top players to slug through. Since tournaments are so large, these pools can last such a long time, having players be on call for the whole entire day or risk being disqualified from the tournament in a moment’s notice.

Pre-planned events like Salty Suites get attention © Robert Paul/@tempusrob/rmpaul.com

Moving Up Ahead

Smash Brothers continues to grow in both viewership and attendees year after year, but as an already-large game, the biggest question is how the community can sustain its growth. Tournaments have become increasingly expensive with expectations running higher than ever. Genesis 3 provided an exclusive Top 8 auditorium style venue, and the slowly looming expectation is that other tournaments need to have the same. As grassroots organizers need more funds, compendiums and donation drives have helped somewhat close the gap, but the model shows fatigue, as seen with the Pound 6 donation drive.

Normally, tournaments charge a venue fee to both players and spectators to help cover some of the costs, but rarely cover the full expenses of an entire national. Alternatively, the assumed approach is to talk to large sponsors to get some funding. Unfortunately, the draw of a grassroots organizer is never really enough to pull substantial sums of money from large sponsors as people would like to assume.

So Where Does the Money Come From?

In an ideal world, top players get paid substantial wages that rival other eSports and tournaments run at a serviceable budget. Unfortunately, these lofty goals could come at the expense of some big cultural sacrifices. The novelty of having large open brackets comes at a very high cost with little return on investment, especially for sponsors. Tournament organizers have to find venues that can fit thousands of attendants, while procuring hundreds of setups, staff, and other resources.

Stream viewership remains one of the key metrics for luring lucrative sponsors an event. The business model of other eSports focuses solely on top players for this very reason. The draw of marquee matchups such as “Mango vs. Armada” brings in much more excitement than “Marthmaster22 vs. random Falco player.” How do tournaments ensure quality content is streamed throughout the course of an event?

Smash Summit 2 is happening later this year © Beyond the Summit

Top Player Resources and Privilege

Approaching the end of 2015, player fatigue became apparent with several top players underperforming, or simply refusing to enter major events. As events saturate the calendar, top players will continue to be more selective over which events to attend. It’s a nice place to be in for a top player, but this may cut off the structure of a grassroots major in the long run. Would they rather attend an event such as Battle of the Five Gods that has a larger prize pool and nicer structure, or a grassroots event where they have to tread through brackets with a smaller prize pot? As much as many would want top players to consider the grassroots events, it's hard to blame them for choosing invitationals where they are subject to better treatment and more lucrative payouts.

Ahead

It’s an interesting transition period for Smash that is still trying to figure out its own competitive identity. Will invite-only events eventually rule Smash as other eSports? Probably not, at least for a while. Invitationals require external groups (with deep pockets) to come in frequently enough that top players outright refuse to enter anything else. Grassroots events such as Genesis and The Big House have garnered well-deserved reputations that it would be hard to see the majority of top players ditch the events.

Still, the cost of growth remains a very real concern. The novelty of compendiums have lost its luster as an external resource. The question looms on how tournament organizers offset costs and budget, while continuing to draw in top players. Can viewership continue to grow while maintaining an open-bracket structure or will they be forced to pivot into a top-player centric structure, marginalizing the rest of the competition?

It’s an interesting dilemma to have as a community. It will be interesting to see how larger tournament organizers adapt to the tournament environment in 2016 and beyond.

Check in two weeks from now for a new Tafokints Talks, Tafokints' take on what's going on in the Smash community.