Inside IEM Katowice: How a small Polish city became an e-sports goliath - stiertheirignishe

For the bit straight weekend, Katowice, Poland is ground zero for the worldly concern of e-sports. Favorable the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) League of Legends championship net weekend, the top pros from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) and StarCraft II experience today taken over this quaint little city.

Over 113,000 masses visited IEM inside Spodek sphere and the IEM Exhibition at the adjacent International Congress Center last year when the event was held over one weekend. George Woo, worldwide event merchandising manager at Intel, expects over 125,000 attendees this year when everything is tallied. The full universe of Katowice was just now nether 300,000 as of 2015.

But with IEM Katowice existence what many in the industry consider the Super Bowl of e-sports—given it's the culmination of the 11th season of the global tournament—it's the livestreams that beam taboo to the world across platforms like Twitch, ESL.tv, and the Intel Uttermost Masters site that ingest really put this city on the mapping. Last twelvemonth's consequence was watched by over 34 million gaming fans, and Woo believes this year's event will easily top 40 one thousand thousand.

And as it turns out, I had a small take off in IEM Katowice's birth.

When I originally pitched PCWorld about an article of how Katowice became the epicentre of e-sports, I had no idea that I was in reality involved in the answer. I've codified for many outlets over the past 25-plus years covering the games industry. And one of those outlets was Forbes. Back in 2012, the ESPNs and Mashables of the world were completely incognizant to e-sports. Editors routinely upset down pitches because e-sports was "just a fad" or not a real "business." Forbes happened to have an open policy on natural covering completely aspects of play, which allowed me to post stories and interviews with the leading movers and shakers in this aggressive industry.

One such interview back in February 2012 was with Michal Blicharz, the managing director of favoring gaming at ESL. That interview was read by a councilman from Katowice, who detected that Blicharz was Burnish, looked him upwards on Facebook, and reached out. It turned out they had friends in common. Winged forward to a couple months later and they were signing letters of intent between Intel, ESL, and the metropolis at the Katowice president's role.

"Katowice is an old commercial enterprise metropolis that was well-stacked around the ember mines in the region, but nowadays IT's building an persona as a place that's unsealed to modern technology and youth culture," Blicharz said. "A global gaming event held in Katowice's main sports venue fit into the that trope very easily. The city had the vision to recognise a peachy opportunity and has benefited tremendously on an economic and PR level. In 2014 the Katowice city council voted a bill to support IEM until 2019."

iem katowice starcraft — AStarCraft 2 match at IEM Katowice.

That visual sense helped all parties involved. Before Intel and ESL ran the first event in Katowice in 2013, the largest event they had sold tickets to was about 1,000 people. No one in the western world had filled out a venue of 11,000 people.

"Personally, I thought process at the time that having 3,000 citizenry at that place would be a massive achiever, and even then the place wouldn't even be fractional full," Blicharz said. "This is why we had a free entry model with tickets that let you skip the queues and provide other benefits. The turnout surpassed everything I've ever imagined—one hour before the start of the show on stage, all seating in the house were completely full, and some two to three thousand people were still queueing outside in the freezing far (nigh 22 degrees Fahrenheit)."

Solicit admits that Intel wouldn't make up able to afford the type of huge event IEM has become today clean five old age ago.

"We had few luck on our side," Woo said. "The stadium was there, but gaming was subordinate the radar in Poland and we didn't know if people would come on."

iem katowice overview 4 — People showed up.

Attending increased from 50,000 in 2013 to 104,000 in 2015 and 113,000 in 2016, thanks in part to the expansion to the convention center next to the arena.

"Being the first there allowed USA to exploit into this Brobdingnagian community in important Oriental European Community and people were willing to trip from every parts of Common Market to Poland," Solicit said. "It grew organically."

It grew so much that this year the event has been unfold over two weekends. Blicharz said the consequence ran out of space to accommodate all the e-sports fans last year.

"This was the only affair we could ut brief of building another locus side by side to the Spodek domain and the International Congress Center," Blicharz said. "It has allowed us to extend the tournaments for fans of each respective game without congesting the schedule in the stadium. No unmatchable had through anything like this, to my knowledge, thus the whole industry will be much wiser after the double case is over. IT emphatically feels like the right matter to do right now."

Today IEM in Katowice is the largest e-sports-themed exposition in the world. There are 20 booths packed exclusive the convention centrist filled with sponsors and games. Additional areas inside the arena offer previews of new virtual-world platforms like Intel's Project Admixture and games like Arizona Sunshine, The Unverbalized,and Lone Echo. The event besides showcases another e-sports tournaments, including CrossFire and Heroes of the Tempest on smaller stages, on with an all-female pro CS:GO tourney.

Blicharz said IT takes 1,845 work years' worth of effort in under two weeks to make sure as shootin the event runs swimmingly. And that's just the core event gang, not including external stave that was hired to build the stage, security, catering staff and several other agencies.

"This is going to be a powerful effort by the company. It's the largest amount of work ESL's e'er through with for one event," Blicharz said.

First, fans with access to VR headsets volition get a sensation of being there because Paring.tv set is broadcasting the event in virtual reality. That ties into the overall button by Intel to wont IEM to innovate fans to what could comprise the emerging of competitive gaming: practical world e-sports.

It's interesting to suppose that a small metropolis that wasn't known away of Poland just now five geezerhood agone is today synonymous with big companies suchlike Intel and ESL. And it's on the cusp of what's next in e-sports, showcasing VR technology to its attendees.

Woo said those fans WHO come on in Poland are among the to the highest degree lusty in altogether of e-sports—right high there with the Brazilians.

"IEM Katowice has a World Cup type of bombilation and feel," Woo said. "The partnership with the city and those venues allow us to turn in a populace class event."

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/412279/inside-iem-katowice-how-a-small-polish-city-became-an-e-sports-goliath.html

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