ESL Pro Tour and Exclusivity
Most insiders of the scene allude to organisations not making money off their CS:GO rosters. The extremely high salaries and running costs along with no revenue-shared model that League of Legends and Overwatch have means making profit is hard.
The recent announcement of the ESL Pro Tour may means this is to change. As it has been pointed out by many, the Pro Tour is the same tournaments that have been running the past few years but now with more exclusivity rights for ESL Pro League. However, I believe this Pro Tour will greatly benefit the professional scene, especially for organisations.
Benefits for Organisations
Organisations rely on sponsor money, merchandise sales, invested income, content creation and potentially cuts of prize money. Looking at these income sources, you don’t necessarily need the best team in the world to be making money off your team, the true answer is popularity. Sponsors’ main goals is to get their brand/company noticed and this comes with merchandise sales and a large outreach to fans and audiences.
This can be seen quite clearly in a relatively new 100 Thieves founded by Matthew “Nadeshot” Haag. He has stated in a number of sources and most recently in his announcement of not bidding for a Call of Duty Pro League spot (reported upwards of $20 million) that entertainment and apparel are his main focuses. He is running a gaming and entertainment company with esports as an outreach.
This is all related to ESL Pro Tour as this new tour has a hierarchal qualification system akin to Dota’s Pro Circuit. Having a points-based system removes the randomness of an invites based system. The invite system currently very prevalent in CS:GO works by inviting currently high ranked teams to tournaments in several months time. The points based system allows teams to keep a track of where they stand, what they are qualified for and who else is attending well in advance.
The benefit for organisations lies in having the ability to show sponsors where they rank, the strength of their roster, how they’ve improved and which tournaments they will be attending. For small organisations rising through MDL, National Championships and Opens this is vital for pulling in more sponsorship allowing them to grow.
Negating an exclusive league is vital for the continued growth of the game and professional scene. Exclusive leagues are only beneficial to the forming teams and show a lack of support for lower ranked teams and organisations with less funds.
The professional CS:GO scene, in my opinion, is the strongest in the world of esports. Any player, for almost any region, can work their way to the top if the energy and drive is there. Systems such as FPL/FPLC and ESEA Rank G/S give continued monetary support to players wishing to give their all to the game. The league system ESEA provides allows any group of 5 players to become professionals with no fees or bureaucracy.
Anti-monopoly
The raw meaning of “monopoly” is mono meaning “single” and poly “to sell”. ESL and Dreamhack are owned by Turtle Entertainment which is over 84% controlled by Modern Times Group. Allowing a single organisation to completely dominate the scene is not the way forward envisioned by many. Organisers like ELEAGUE brought mainstream television to counter-strike. PGL brought innovations to onscreen effects never seen before in CS.
Words of ESL not allowing more than 60 days dedicated to tournaments outside of the Pro Tour isn’t a point which the community should stand for. With 10 masters tournaments a year, alongside the two Valve-Sponsored majors, and two player breaks, little time is left for other tournaments to fit in as well as proper dedicated bootcamp and practice time for these top teams.
2020 will be the first year of the Pro Tour with more news coming at ESL One New York 2019. The community must take on what ESL put forward but also be critical of everything as if action is not taken immediately, they may get away with it.
