Author Notes: Thanks again to everyone who is reading this work. We'll see if Alexis was the only winner of the duel. Apologizes to those that have been waiting for an update, but real life has been crazy lately and have not had much time to write. This chapter is a little short, but I wanted to get it out. Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh GX, and all rights belong to the creators only.
Chapter 6: The Day After
"When you're in the day-to-day grind, it just seems like it's another step along the way. But I find joy in the actual process, the journey, the work. It's not the end. It's not the end event." - Cal Ripken, Jr.
The morning after was always going to be critical for Syrus to determine if his gamble had paid off. He had gotten $100,000 as the league's share of revenue from the live audience and Alexis and Harrington both got paid $35,000 as an appearance fee. He had sold $1 million in advertising revenue because companies were interested in reaching a younger audience. The league made a small profit off the event, which was good. Syrus was expecting to break even at best, so making a profit that could go into the streaming product or return to the league to pay for duelists or better venues to stage his events was good.
Ratings wise, this event had done modestly well and seemed to be well-reviewed. The national rating was a 0.7 which considering Syrus had promised a 0.5 rating to advertisers looked pretty good. There were a couple of things he would do differently if he chose to do another time buy.
The first would be to have a match duel. Most of the dueling fans would have preferred to have another event based on online feedback. In addition, sports like boxing and MMA had multiple fights on their events, so it would be a good way to get people conditioned to watching duels. His second fix would be to have some sort of competition element in play. An exhibition duel was nice, but most duelists seemed to want to compete for something. Competition was a natural angle to get viewers in and for the ADL to sell their story. All in all, it was a positive night and it remained to be seen if he could build the momentum when the new season started in February.
Of course, there was another professional dueling circuit on the other side of the world, and the Pro League had built in advantages that the ADL lacked.
The first advantage was that most of the dueling schools historically were oriented towards the Pro League as a dream for those students. If you went to Duel Academy and were talented enough to gain attention, the Pro League was a realistic goal. Since West, North, South, and East Academies were affiliated with Duel Academy, the Pro League had a built-in pipeline all over the world to milk. The ADL did get some duelists out of these schools, but the lack of team dueling culture in these schools and emphasis on solo duels meant that the Pro League was more comfortable based on schooling.
The second critical advantage was the Kaiba Dome. Every sport needed to have a signature arena that every duelist dreamed of, and the Kaiba Dome had been built up as an arena that meant something, and had the ghosts. Not actual ghosts, mind you.
Every single stadium that is old in sports has moments that define the venue. The ghosts of the stadium come out if the home team needs help, or adds to the aura. Kaiba Dome had seen plenty of legendary duels all the time, and the stage meant something. Syrus lacked that stage, because of the youth of the league and because trying to grow rivalry matches was taking longer than he would have thought.
Was the Pro League concerned? Not even close. The Pro League beamed all of their events around the world, and got millions of viewers over both broadcast television and PPV cable. They didn't need to buy time on television to get their content across to the viewer. Seto Kaiba had the wits about him to make sure that students who went to one of his school to be pushed to the Pro League, which meant that he allowed those matches to be beamed into the schools. This was part of building the brand, and something that the Pro League was okay with. They had the established names and the students who regarded as the best in the pipeline. No need to change with the times if you were on top.
At the ADL offices in Chicago, Syrus was pouring over the ratings data and talking with some of the team managers on a conference call. The initial responses seemed to be good. The audience in the theater had all felt comfortable, and the noise level translated well. One complaint was that Alexis and Harrington's decks had not been explained much, thus it was a barrier to enjoyment for those who did not know dueling as well or ran different decks. Syrus felt encouraged that people seemed to be interested in having Alexis being someone who had equal billing, and not just someone who was there on outside factors. That was something that Syrus never really thought about. He had asked Alexis to do this because he needed a favor, and she was a friend that happened to be female and good at what she did. The fact that Alexis won was a good selling point, but that was just a byproduct of the fact that dueling was a sport where the advantage was on skill rather than biology.