ESL under fire over poor qualifier coverage; redeem themselves

ESL is without a doubt the largest tournament organizer in CS:GO. They are receiving massive amounts of criticism for their inability to stream all of the IEM Katowice 2020 Closed Qualifiers. This is very disheartening for CS:GO fans because we expect a little bit more from the big dog of the scene. Popular Twitch streamer Erik "fl0m" Flom even stated how silly it was that a much smaller organizer in Mythic was able to stream all of their matches, but ESL can’t stream professional matches.

fl0m isn’t the only big name in CS:GO that is criticizing ESL. Chad "SPUNJ" Burchill, a well-known commentator and former professional player, also voiced his displeasure with ESL. He also found it absurd that ESL couldn’t broadcast these matches but was even more upset at the choice of games streamed and their unwillingness to accept community help in streaming all matches.

Like many CS fans, I was sitting in the ESL Twitch channel at the exact time the Gen.G versus Complexity game was supposed to take place. After about 20 minutes of delay, it was stated that ESL was experiencing a technical issue and that FURIA vs Chaos would be streamed instead. I mean no offense when I say that there were much better matches to be streamed instead of this one. It did turn out to be a good series, but that doesn't excuse the poor selection. Twitch streamer Alexandria “gaules” Borba proved that correct when he peaked at 30,000 live viewers in his stream where he commentated over the HLTV live scoreboard for MIBR versus INTZ and FURIA versus Chaos, while the official ESL channel had only about 5,000 viewers for a live match. gaules has also stated that he would be willing to live-stream the games and put up whatever advertisements and overlay ESL required.

Then to make matters worse, after the FURIA versus Chaos series ended, ESL chose to stream Complexity versus Chaos. Once again, no offense but there were other matches that were much more desirable than this one. New Complexity is exciting, but watching Chaos again is not. An elimination game would have been much more desirable, or even a series that doesn’t have a team that we just watched.

After a plethora of criticism, Shaun Clark, a lead commentator at ESL, stated that he would be discussing these issues “more in detail” with Michal Blicharz, the Vice President of Pro Gaming at ESL.

After only a few hours from his discussion tweet, Shaun Clark stated that “Its solved already and tonight’s NA qualifier will have full coverage, likewise moving forward we will install our new policy.” It is very reassuring to know that ESL has heard the community and is fixing these issues moving forward.