Let me first list all the things I think was wrong with The World Championships 2016.
I do have some ideas and recommendations for you regarding next years edition of The World Championships...
Let another organizer host The World Championships 2017! You can still own some rights to the tournament, considering that you are the founders of the whole thing. But please, just reach out to other organizers and let them host next years competition. You could even contact us at Fragbite. Our Fragbite Masters tournaments have been praised again and again and I'm sure that we would be able to host a great edition of The World Championships in Stockholm next year if we got the chance and decide to do it.
The next year after that? Well then you just let another organizer take it, so that it changes from year to year. As it should be. I think that it would be the absolutely best thing that could happen to the tournament, and it sure would guarantee that the different organizers would strive to make an even better tournament than last year.
Oh and by the way... I loved this years stage. It really was something else. Well done!
1. Where are all the stars? The biggest name in the competition must have been the FaZe Clan player Fabien "kioShiMa" Fiey. I mean seriously? It makes me think about the world championship in hockey that also lacks the biggest stars due to the fact that the Stanley Cup is being played in North America. We need the big stars to make TWC really great, and to get them to participate we'll need both a bigger prize pool and better planning when it comes to the "when". I'll get back to that last part.
2. The location. TWC has been held in Belgrade, Serbia, in two consecutive years now. A few more if you count the European tournament that it all started out with. This is a problem. Not only because it can hard for certain countries to get visas to visit Serbia, but also because it feels wrong to see the same city host the competition year after year.
3. The talents. First of all: I do not have anything against anyone of this years talents. I actually do think that the casters did okay and that rizc is doing fine as an analyst. But come on... It supposed to be a World Championship, the crème de la crème. That should be the case with the group of talents as well. And please, do not put people whom hardly can speak English in the stream to analyze the games.
4. The lack of coverage. Updates on the Electronic Flag Facebook page, that was all the coverage I saw from E-Frag during this years event. Come on... You are freaking news media for crying out loud. Your site should be filled with news articles, video interviews, scores and brackets and images. But no. Nothing. That's really bad.
5. You didn't even finish the website. I sent you an email three days before the competition started asking why the Swedish jersey wasn't shown on the website when all of the others were. I got an reply the same day saying that "It will be there soon". The event is over and there's still no Swedish jersey on there. Neither are the lineups of the different nations presented even though you can see the text "See full roster" when hovering with the mouse over the flags of the participating nations. There are some information about tickets and accomodation, but none about where to follow the tournament online or the about the latest score. That's not serious.
6. Planning. I know that the dates for this years finals were decided pretty early and I guess that you hoped that noone else would put an event at the same dates or even close to it. You can't just hope that it will work like that. You have to work together with the big tournament organizers to find a date that works for everyone. This is the only way to make sure that the real professionals can attend the event which in turn will make the whole thing a lot more interesting both for the public and for sponsors.
There's probably a lot of other stuff that I could mention but I'll leave at that so that we can move on to the next part: How to make it better.
2. The location. TWC has been held in Belgrade, Serbia, in two consecutive years now. A few more if you count the European tournament that it all started out with. This is a problem. Not only because it can hard for certain countries to get visas to visit Serbia, but also because it feels wrong to see the same city host the competition year after year.
3. The talents. First of all: I do not have anything against anyone of this years talents. I actually do think that the casters did okay and that rizc is doing fine as an analyst. But come on... It supposed to be a World Championship, the crème de la crème. That should be the case with the group of talents as well. And please, do not put people whom hardly can speak English in the stream to analyze the games.
4. The lack of coverage. Updates on the Electronic Flag Facebook page, that was all the coverage I saw from E-Frag during this years event. Come on... You are freaking news media for crying out loud. Your site should be filled with news articles, video interviews, scores and brackets and images. But no. Nothing. That's really bad.
5. You didn't even finish the website. I sent you an email three days before the competition started asking why the Swedish jersey wasn't shown on the website when all of the others were. I got an reply the same day saying that "It will be there soon". The event is over and there's still no Swedish jersey on there. Neither are the lineups of the different nations presented even though you can see the text "See full roster" when hovering with the mouse over the flags of the participating nations. There are some information about tickets and accomodation, but none about where to follow the tournament online or the about the latest score. That's not serious.
6. Planning. I know that the dates for this years finals were decided pretty early and I guess that you hoped that noone else would put an event at the same dates or even close to it. You can't just hope that it will work like that. You have to work together with the big tournament organizers to find a date that works for everyone. This is the only way to make sure that the real professionals can attend the event which in turn will make the whole thing a lot more interesting both for the public and for sponsors.
There's probably a lot of other stuff that I could mention but I'll leave at that so that we can move on to the next part: How to make it better.
I do have some ideas and recommendations for you regarding next years edition of The World Championships...
Let another organizer host The World Championships 2017! You can still own some rights to the tournament, considering that you are the founders of the whole thing. But please, just reach out to other organizers and let them host next years competition. You could even contact us at Fragbite. Our Fragbite Masters tournaments have been praised again and again and I'm sure that we would be able to host a great edition of The World Championships in Stockholm next year if we got the chance and decide to do it.
The next year after that? Well then you just let another organizer take it, so that it changes from year to year. As it should be. I think that it would be the absolutely best thing that could happen to the tournament, and it sure would guarantee that the different organizers would strive to make an even better tournament than last year.
So please, please E-Frag... Listen to the popular Disney song and "Let it go"!
Oh and by the way... I loved this years stage. It really was something else. Well done!
