Hey ESL and EWC — We need to talk.

Before we go into the article, this article is purely feedback for ESL and EWC (Esports World Cup). I have all intentions to improve ESL and any other tournament organiser’s product. If you feel that I’m taking cheap shots at EWC/ESL then it isn’t my intention.

I do currently work for ESL as a contractor and could be taking some risk in writing this article. However, I believe it is incredibly important to write this article given the two areas that I wish to address.

There has been two things that I’ve been wanting to point out which relates to both EWC and ESL in regards to the two most recent tournaments.

This relates to EWC in regards to their broadcasting in general for the Closed Qualifiers (ran by ESL) and ESL Pro League in regards to their B-Stream.

Most of you will already know the issues with both but I thought I’d highlight this in an article.

The Esports World Cup — Closed Qualifiers

You may have noticed in the closed qualifiers that only one game was broadcasted. There were actually two games were going on at the same time.

I must state that ESL were most likely hired to manage the tournament and were provided instructions on the broadcast. I do not believe that ESL would ever leave a game to be unbroadcasted. They have a consistent history of having all closed qualifier games broadcasted.

I noticed that the 2nd game wasn’t casted initially in the Middle East. I assured people that they wouldn’t do that for the other regions because they were more developed in the CS2 scene.

However, I got home and was looking forward to watching Tyloo v Lynn Vision. I looked at HLTV and saw that there was no official stream on it. I assumed ESL must have forgot about it.

They have done this previously where they put the stream onto HLTV with 1–2 hours before the event. HLTV can vouch for me on this.

However, it was 30 minutes before the game and I noted that only Elfish and Pilski were in the production discord.

I asked whether I could cast Tyloo v Lynn Vision if there wasn’t an official broadcast. This is the biggest game in China after all.

The Duya and Houya crew had asked for it as well but I’m not sure if they were successful either. I was advised that I was unable to cover Tyloo v Lynn Vision by ESL due to the Tournament Organiser.

ESEA (ESL-owned) also advised me that even making an email to costreaming would have no effect.

This meant that the Tyloo/Lynn Vision BO3 was not broadcasted in any language at all.

This continued for Australia, Europe, North America and South America where the Gaules crew just casted off the HLTV page. I followed suit and did the same thing for Australia when I was able to. This is obviously of a lower quality broadcast as people would prefer the actual game.

Sashi’s Owner, D0KT0R3N came into the ESEA Broadcasting Discord and asked to cast his own team as well. He also did the same as Gaules in the end. He even questioned on why he wasn’t able to get the IP since nobody was casting it.

This was an incredibly poor decision where some of the arguably better games went uncasted. Flyquest wasn’t casted for one game, the only team in Australia that is paid any sort of salary.

Tyloo v Lynn Vision doesn’t have to be explained any further. I mean the biggest game between China #1 and China #2 does not need to be justified.

I can go on and on in regards to it. This is just unacceptable and I have no idea who made the decisions but if you lock off IPs for any tournament and it is not a LAN.

You should atleast provide an official broadcast, a clean feed or a CSTV atleast. Your product is incredibly important for the organisations who are entering your tournament for their own sustainablity.

Another highlight pointed out by Annette Potter (INS’s mum) was that they didn’t post the stream links in any of their tweets. A lot of replays and epic clutches were left without a link to the main stream or the stream that it was from.

The EWC Social Media team did rectify this mistake on the next day which is great to their credit.

ESL Pro League B Stream

I think everybody knows what I’ll be referring to when we go into this one. The delay between the Casters and the Gameplay as well as the interviews is absolutely killer.

You can tell the delay is there when Skriv, Ne0kai, Trav, Lucy and Bdog sit there for longer than 5 seconds waiting for a question, doing an interview or for production to switch off.

This isn’t even on the casters but they are the ones being left out to dry when plays are supposedly missed because they’re a few seconds behind. I, the viewer can tell that the casters are clearly online and not in Malta.

I don’t believe this is a corner that you needed to cut. It clearly affects your product where we could miss epic moments for your highlights and the casters’s reels because of the delay.

You could utilise the casters/analysts on the A stream who are yapping away to be on the B stream. Alternatively, you can bring the casters from the B stream to Malta.

This has probably tilted not only the viewers but the casters casting the event. They may not bring it up with you because they also want to keep their jobs too.

I hope in the future ESL Pro League broadcasts that we do not have an online broadcast where there is a clear delay between the LAN itself and the casters.

I have no idea whether I’m out of line to demand better. I’m just baffled and frustrated on production and broadcast decisions to cut corners especially when it harms the entire product.