B Site: the NA-based alternative CS:GO league

DeKay reports that a new CS:GO league, B Site, will be launching a competitive series in early 2020. Twelve teams will pay $2m USD for a franchise slot and partial ownership of the league. While other NA-based forays failed as a result of including exclusivity agreements on its teams, B Site will not place similar restrictions on participating in other tournaments. 1

While participating in events outside of semi-annual Major tournaments should be free from contractual limitation, B Site’s proposed schedule of three month-long regular seasons followed by a tournament playoff with a year-ending LAN final could easily eat up half a year of time in planning and execution. Forget the two million USD investment on a slot, that’s a huge time commitment for these organizations.

I wonder how MTG feel about the prospect of a successful NA-based venture stealing their thunder after being rebuked again for attempting virtually the same thing. Well, nearly the same thing.

How about the realistic returns on investment for orgs and rosters? DeKay shows off a chart of a projected revenue share and it’s a substantially higher rate than what the same chart claims MTG pay out for its ESL Pro League participants.

VP tops SK in a seemingly half-filled arena

I watched the grand final of DreamHack Masters Las Vegas last night and I’ve got a few questions that I want to, at first, ask rhetorically then immediately revert to type by spilling disorganized prose into this post via my keyboard.

DreamHack sure as hell doesn’t give a shit about fucks, right?

Personally, I don’t mind the lack of a language filter when it comes to expressing how important a previous play was or how impossible it appears that a certain team would lose in a situation, but compared to the last big CSGO tournament, the ELEAGUE Major (which Valve are keen on identifying as the Atlanta Major presented by ELEAGUE), there seemed to be a more relaxed-yet-mature atmosphere surrounding the entire production. While innuendo wasn’t necessarily the center stage of analyst desk segments and floor interviews, I don’t think the amount of joking present in this establishment was terribly out of place or demeaning to the nature of the broadcast.

How about them Poles, folks?

Virtus.Pro proved it deserves to remain a top-tier professional team by defeating the recently reorganized SK Gaming roster to win DH Masters Las Vegas two games to one (8-16 Cobblestone, 16-11 Train, 16-13 Mirage). The $200k USD first prize is a slightly bigger payoff than the team’s second place showing at the Atlanta Major and it’s about time.

SK’s roster woes aren’t really woes, but I’m sure they’re pretty disappointed with how quickly VP deconstructed their game plan. When the Virtus-plow is on point, you get rekt. Considering VP only needed the one map to warm back up after an extended downtime from playing, it’s pretty clear that the Polish side have rediscovered the advantage to its rock-solid roster in the current meta of CSGO.

Where was the audience?

I think it’s safe to say that the attendance for such an important event for CSGO was a little disappointing. There’s so many pockets of empty seats that are shown on camera even during wide-shots of the stage between rounds.

Now, I understand the MGM Grand arena is a considerably larger venue for a States-side DreamHack event to be held in, but you’d think they would be trying to give out tickets left and right to entice people to take a winter vacation to Las Vegas and watch a premier offline CSGO tournament live.

After taking two seconds to look up ticket prices to see how expensive it was to get into the arena for the weekend, I instantly understood why the areas in front of teams were filled with so many patches of empty seats: they were assigned to the $150 Premium ticket holders.

A bit of an oversight for an event that didn’t sell out.

My notes on the r/Overwatch content petition.

Whenever something happens that catches my eye in the realm of sports, I generally try to break it down the simplest way possible by putting it in my notebook. I’ve got pages upon pages of notes about the latest r/Overwatch drama that I discussed on the latest episode of the lowercase esports podcast that might not have made it to air, but was on my mind while recording it.

Hit the jump to peruse the knee-jerk reactions that I record in the moment to keep some semblance of consistency and sanity when it comes to trying to keep these things in order in my head.

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