It has been greatly covered that EPIC.LAN 45 brought attention from European teams because of the VRS points offered. This ended up creating the first grand finals with no UK teams present. The highest a UK team finished was NXT in fourth, who had previously won the event three times in a row.
With 18 Matches in total featured on HLTV for teams to gain these all-important VRS points, it makes sense that competition would make its way from abroad. There are plenty of opportunities at EPIC.LAN alone to bolster a team’s ranking to gain more Tier-2 invites.
Some people might see this as a bad thing; maybe these European teams are bottlenecking the scene. Perhaps people don’t see the point of coming if they will just lose to Iberian Soul, a team ranked within the top 30.
But others like Matas “Extinct” Strumila from NXT have been yearning for this: “I love it. This is something I have wanted for a long time. I just wanted to play European teams and get better at playing against them.”
Or William “wfn” Maskrey from 8Sins: “This gives us a chance now. We have the chance to watch them and see them talk to each other. It is the little things like that.”
Outside of learning from the players, the likes of Adam “AdamJC” Colwell talk about how it is just simply cool to have this calibre of players around at an EPIC.LAN: “It is really cool having these teams at EPIC.LAN. I hope there are more in the future and are as friendly as these guys here at this LAN.”
In response to this European interest, UKCSGO sat down with Tom “Gumpster” Gumbleton to talk about how EPIC.LAN will react to this extra interest, and what is their response to make sure they aren’t losing their UK fanbase?
For those who don’t know Gumpster, he’s been a part of the UK scene for years and has been working with EPIC since 2013. With that experience, he has been able to get a unique view of the scene from a tournament organiser’s perspective.
How has EPIC.LAN 45 been for you? Summer EPIC tends to be a bit more relaxed, but it’s certainly been a bit different this time around.
It has been much busier than we expected, the biggest thing obviously being the exposure from international teams. We have had a lot of international broadcasters who wanted to get involved and watch some of the games. Obviously, mostly their own national teams, but it is still something UK teams haven’t had before, being exposed to an international audience like this.
From our point of view, that is a good thing. It has made us do things that we need to try and do quicker from a broadcasting point of view.
So, from a broadcasting point of view, it has changed. But from a general competitive and event perspective, what has EPIC’s reaction been to these international teams?
It is more competitive than ever; there is no denying that. Unfortunately, as we have seen in this event, the UK teams have been beaten quite comprehensively. There are certainly some rumours that I have heard on Saturday night, while I was out socialising. Teams like NXT might not come back because they won so much, and now they won’t be able to win certain events to help their organisations.
This sounds quite disappointing to me, as I would prefer UK teams to stand up to this opportunity. This is a unique chance to play teams that have had Major experience, the big stage experience, and be able to learn from them. I think all of us were saying that before the event, but it is a good opportunity to play these teams and see what they actually do. Broaden their horizons.
My plea and my advice to the UK scene is: Trust us to do the right thing for you.
From an EPIC.LAN perspective, we maintain that we are an open LAN tournament. We have always had the possibility that European teams could come over, but the prize money has never been enough for them. Now, VRS points are the driving force behind this.
Is that sustainable? I don’t think so because of how expensive it is to come to these events. You definitely cannot do it three times a year as an international team. With the Major cycle, it is even more difficult because you want to get in that cycle for the VRS points. So you have to pick your events very carefully.
Therefore, I don’t think every event will have a massive international presence. There will be some events which are largely UK-based because of how expensive it is and how little the reward is. I was speaking to one of the managers here, and they won’t break even unless they win the event. That is a heavy financial risk for every international team that is coming to this team.
From EPIC.LAN’s perspective, nothing really changes, and nothing has changed. It is just more exposure and more eyes on the event, which may help the event going forward.
This is a hypothetical. Say a lot of European teams come to EPIC.LAN 46, and as you mentioned, some UK teams just don’t bother coming. Then for EPIC.LAN 47, those EU teams don’t come, but then the UK teams don’t come either, because of what happened previously. Is there any worry that these EU teams might start pushing the UK audience?
I suppose there is a worry, but my plea and my advice to the UK scene is: Trust us to do the right thing for you. At the end of the day, there have been extra eyes brought in, which means there is more potential to build that into the sponsorship package. We can maybe add more prize money to the event, which means in the future we can do something like Copenhagen Games did. You have the main prize-winning tournament, but a smaller B tournament that would go on and have prize money for that as well.
I think the reality is that UK players just need to trust that what we do, behind the scenes, is going to help them and reward them. We are not going to walk away from UK players. If the UK teams continue to support us, we will continue to support them as best as we can. We will always have that as a priority.
For the more casual players, is that how you are going to appeal to them? Make inters more official?
I have been around a long time now, back in the glory days of Counter-Strike: Source, I have seen everything.
I used to talk about iSeries being the FA Cup of esports. It was where David faced off against Goliath. The small teams from the UK are taking on the big European monsters that there are. This is the way forward and something that will happen.
That is just a natural evolution for an event like this sometimes. Whether that is, through prize money or other things.
For EPIC.LAN 46 in isolation, it is reasonable to assume a lot of European teams will come. Will there be any special preparation from EPIC because of this?
We are looking at the possibility of a B stream for the games. We would like to broaden our broadcasting side of things. We have done B streams before, but we want to do this to cater more towards UK teams. So have an international audience and the bigger games on the A stream, but UK teams can stay on the B stream.
We are currently in the early planning stages for the next event, and certainly, we will have to increase the level of our staffing behind the scenes. Three admins for the tournament are not viable or sustainable when you have bigger presence teams now. Especially with the arena and fair-isle, there is a potential for two floors being used for CS.
I have already had initial conversations with our partnership coordinator, talking about sponsors and getting a little bit more prize money built into our prize pool. Whether that comes off is a different story; it is very difficult.
We are trying to plan as best as we can, but it is an ongoing process.
