Nov. 29, 2020 11:43 PM
Now here's a thread I'm surprised doesn't exist yet, as far as I can tell: There's one for general Beyblade as a hobby, but not so much the competitive aspect of it. There seems to be a pretty sizable population gap between the casual fanbase (anime watchers, casual collectors, etc.) and the competitive community for Beyblade for some reason, and I'm a bit interested in finding out why.
Backstory (why does this thread exist?)
TL;DR: I was wrong to think that making competitive Beyblade YouTube videos would grow interest in the competitive scene of the game, so now I'm asking all active and former competitive players: Do you remember how exactly you got into the competitive aspect of Beyblade? Also, for any casual fans that happen to be reading this, your input is welcome too: What discourages you from getting into competitive, and is there anything that could be done, in your opinion, to make the competitive aspect of the game more appealing?
I feel like I've always technically been "into it", like even when I got my first few Beyblades 8 years ago I was trying out all these different combos to find the best one so I could beat everyone else in my friendgroup, so is it just something you either have interest in, or don't?
Backstory (why does this thread exist?)
Spoiler (Click to View)
The competitive "pipeline", I guess, is something that I've been interested in over the past few years, especially as I was more active on my YouTube Channel. I was actually inspired to start my channel by Leo Burst in 2015, and as stated in the description, it's is one of the few English-speaking competitive Beyblade channels out there. At about 1,700 subscribers, it's among the larger competitive channels... but still very tiny compared to many of the other big-time BeyTubers like Zankye (536,000), BBG (1,240,000), and Drago Galaxy (850,000).
Due the rise of commercial social media during the late 2010s coupled with the release timing of Burst, BeyTubers saw a huge increase in popularity during the past 5 years. Again, to use Zankye as an example, his channel has existed since 2010 or 2011. In 2015 he celebrated 100,000 subscribers, and since then as of this post he has gained over 4 times that many, in about half of his channel's lifetime. Other big channels like Drago Galaxy, Super Beyblade Family, and LeftBurst didn't even exist before Burst started and they are all well over 100,000 subscribers as well. Meanwhile, the largest English-speaking competitive channel is I think Mack The Burst, who only has about 10,000 subscribers.
While larger channels with more views and subscribers will make more money, meaning that the creators can invest more into better production equipment, the fundamental difference is more than just video quality. These large channels make primarily, if not exclusively, casual content: including things like news about upcoming releases, unboxings and reviews of new Beyblades/products, and stock battles. This isn't meant as an insult at all - this type of content is clearly very popular as it's what gets these channels views and revenue. Any sort of competitive content, like combo battles/testing or tournament footage, is rare or absent, even among Beytubers who are also competitive players and at least semi-regular tournament attendees. The prominence of dF.P.At and hS.0B.At at large tournaments goes to show that competitive videos from these big Beytubers can be popular enough to influence the meta, but they just don't get made most of the time.
What I think is the weird disconnect is not the lack of competitive content. That's just a result of the real issue, which is the lack of demand for that content. Production value aside, the main audience of BeyTubers, who are in a way the 'faces' of the community, just don't seem to care about the competitive aspect of the game as much as the anime and content based on that for some reason. I've always thought that because the anime always pushes the narrative of going to tournaments, winning tournaments, and becoming the strongest blader, people would be more inspired to attend real-life tournaments, where they'd be exposed to the competitive aspect of the game, and possibly develop an interest in it, creating demand for competitive content. But that just doesn't seem to be the case for some reason, no matter how much it makes sense.
Due the rise of commercial social media during the late 2010s coupled with the release timing of Burst, BeyTubers saw a huge increase in popularity during the past 5 years. Again, to use Zankye as an example, his channel has existed since 2010 or 2011. In 2015 he celebrated 100,000 subscribers, and since then as of this post he has gained over 4 times that many, in about half of his channel's lifetime. Other big channels like Drago Galaxy, Super Beyblade Family, and LeftBurst didn't even exist before Burst started and they are all well over 100,000 subscribers as well. Meanwhile, the largest English-speaking competitive channel is I think Mack The Burst, who only has about 10,000 subscribers.
While larger channels with more views and subscribers will make more money, meaning that the creators can invest more into better production equipment, the fundamental difference is more than just video quality. These large channels make primarily, if not exclusively, casual content: including things like news about upcoming releases, unboxings and reviews of new Beyblades/products, and stock battles. This isn't meant as an insult at all - this type of content is clearly very popular as it's what gets these channels views and revenue. Any sort of competitive content, like combo battles/testing or tournament footage, is rare or absent, even among Beytubers who are also competitive players and at least semi-regular tournament attendees. The prominence of dF.P.At and hS.0B.At at large tournaments goes to show that competitive videos from these big Beytubers can be popular enough to influence the meta, but they just don't get made most of the time.
What I think is the weird disconnect is not the lack of competitive content. That's just a result of the real issue, which is the lack of demand for that content. Production value aside, the main audience of BeyTubers, who are in a way the 'faces' of the community, just don't seem to care about the competitive aspect of the game as much as the anime and content based on that for some reason. I've always thought that because the anime always pushes the narrative of going to tournaments, winning tournaments, and becoming the strongest blader, people would be more inspired to attend real-life tournaments, where they'd be exposed to the competitive aspect of the game, and possibly develop an interest in it, creating demand for competitive content. But that just doesn't seem to be the case for some reason, no matter how much it makes sense.
TL;DR: I was wrong to think that making competitive Beyblade YouTube videos would grow interest in the competitive scene of the game, so now I'm asking all active and former competitive players: Do you remember how exactly you got into the competitive aspect of Beyblade? Also, for any casual fans that happen to be reading this, your input is welcome too: What discourages you from getting into competitive, and is there anything that could be done, in your opinion, to make the competitive aspect of the game more appealing?
I feel like I've always technically been "into it", like even when I got my first few Beyblades 8 years ago I was trying out all these different combos to find the best one so I could beat everyone else in my friendgroup, so is it just something you either have interest in, or don't?