ANZC — A rebrand to remember.
You might be wondering wait, what? ANZC is a rebrand? What did it used to be called? ANZC used to be called Instafrag which was the…

You might be wondering wait, what? ANZC is a rebrand? What did it used to be called? ANZC used to be called Instafrag which was the Australian Premier Hub supported by Faceit. You can see its own Liquipedia page here.
It used to be owned by SnypeR and partnered with Faceit. It also attempted to run its own league to compete with ESEA. However, it was unsuccessful and was cancelled after one season. It is incredibly rough to run a league especially in competition with ESEA back in those times.
However, it was still the main Faceit hub within Australia. Faceit was seen to have the best anti-cheat and the best pugging experience. There was similar incentives and competitions similar to EU and NA’s FPL and FPLC. These were offered to international teams who flew over for competitions within Sydney/Melbourne.
It eventually changed hands to Conkyy. According to Conkyy, it had some debt against it. The main goal was to make it sustainable and obviously repay the debt.
It was a difficult rebuild given the state it was given to Conkyy in. The previous owner was seen as confrontational by some of the Hub according to reddit. I don’t trust Reddit that much either but it wasn’t in good shape! It would take a very tough and dedicated rebrand to get it back to its feet again.
However, Conkyy wanted to see a bit more such as ANZC hosting its own tournaments. However, it wanted to avoid splashing huge amounts of money for little gain.
There have been many hubs that have flashed and spent all of their money for one Tournament. Shock and Rivalry/Order’s tournament come to mind where everyone was paid but the TO was never seen again.
ANZC held its first tournament, the ANZC Sparks Cup in July 2023. It was attended by various teams including Vertex at the time. The prize pool was $2,000 which was a far cry from other tournaments. However, the key thing was that it was funded through itself not because of a one-off sponsor.
ANZC would follow up with sponsoring Karath’s event in Sydney which was a 4 team LAN event which was casted by myself and Monitor. It was hosted at Red Bull Gaming HUB UTS. The tournament ended just as everything was beginning to close at the HUB which was quite humourous.
The infamous Art of War lineup won the LAN against Bacon and Eggs which was definitely enjoyed by all. I completely forgot how much the prize pool was but it was another grassroots LAN to join Brisvegas.
Recently, ANZC has partnered with Fortress Sydney (and Karath) to run another LAN with 8 teams with a $2,500 prize pool. The series seemingly being called ANZC Locals. Hopefully, we can get a circuit out of this and I presume this is the next goal.
I personally didn’t see ANZC to be too successful in the tournament space. The focus to be sustainable can cause itself to fail due to not wanting to fail. It is a bit of a mindfuck I know. It is essentially death by a thousand cuts rather than one fell swoop.
You have to achieve something in the middle which can be incredibly difficult to balance. However, ANZC has seen some success and is possibly planning even more tournaments.
The Key to Success
The HUB itself has constant games and a very positive attitude especially in trying to getting players who ragequit into the game to finish it off. The administration team is very good at resolving disputes and are quite active even with the absolute worst people to deal with. (yes, I read the discord and GOD….)
Why is this important? If you have happy customers, staff that give a shit and a positive relationship with the community. You’re going to be able to generate the cash to fund tournaments. You also need that one admin who is also a brand risk. (injoke with Flamboyant)
I agree wholeheartily that the Esports scene needs to have the end user pay somehow whether it is via a subscription fee, ticket fee or anything like that. Otherwise, you’ll be essentially burning through sponsor’s money without a plan to generate said cash flow.
It has done that quite well where it has advertised itself as a service to be an exclusive HUB for people who want high quality experiencing while playing CS2. And it is exactly that.
The HUB is also ran by people who work in the industry such as the highly respected, Andrew (wanderkoi), Macmate (Mac), MC (Michael Campagna) and many others.
You have very high quality people who are able to lend a hand if necessary to help assist in setting up or even being at the tournaments.
So when Tournament time comes, we have an admin (Wander), we have producers and observers and lastly, we have the community casters who can help out as well. It is easy when you have a lot of that in-house rather than reaching out to third party and contractors.
Due to this model, it has led to a lot of success as a starting point for the HUB and Tournaments. The next part is being able to set itself as a key tournament organiser which can be a different kettle of fish.
Let’s see how it plays out.