Yahtzee and some of the Australian Gamer guys have had success mixing gaming and bars with the Mana Bar http://www.manabar.com.au/ in Brisbane, Australia.
I've been watching a lot of live gaming lately. Primarily for "League of Legends", a game I've been playing consistently for the last 18 months.
Last weekend was the first world championships for the game. At it's height, over 200,000 people were watching the finals. They believed it was the highest number for people watching a streaming game online.
During the workday, I'll often jump over to www.own3d.tv/live/ for a couple minutes and watch top League players stream their daily games. As I watch now, one top player has close to 6,000 people watching his game -- I watched him start at about 800 people a few months ago.
In a related anecdote, through Reddit and /r/pittsburgh, I've found about a dozen or so local SC players. We've formed a mailing list and I'm holding a viewing party at my apartment next week. We're still looking currently for a local bar which might let us watch SC.
SC2 and the pro-gaming community has never been better!
Love that this is coming together. I shed a nerd tear of loneliness watching the GSL at the wee hours of the morning :) We should get a group together for that.
Why does it need to be live to be exciting? NASL is filmed being cast live, and delayed a day for three reasons:
1. Provides more flexibility for the players schedules
2. Allows time to edit the video, which allows higher production value
3. Prevents the players from cheating by watching a live stream of the game.
I agree casting replays isn't as exciting (because the casters often know the winner), but I don't see how a delayed broadcast of a live casted game is any less exciting than something fully live.
