Cling together, swing together

The cancellation of IEM China is not ESL's fault. Still, it's one of the risks the Cologne company accepts with its IEM strategy.

For eSports in general it’s a sad day. Having to cancel an important event on short notice is never an easy thing to do but Turtle Entertainment didn’t see a different choice today. Intel Extreme Masters China in Guangzhou is cancelled, the community had to swallow that pill.

Originally, IEM China was meant to be held at the Anime Comics and Games show from September 30 to October 4. Be it the unprecedented manpower shortage or the shockwaves of the Senkaku Islands dispute, the trade fair is cancelled. To be clear, the point is: The cancellation of IEM China is not ESL’s fault.



Not their fault, but their decision

However, ESL is buying this risk with the strategy the company is choosing. The Intel Extreme Masters tournament series is the flagship of ESL’s activities. It’s the world championship series and the way it is set up is completely dependant on big trade fairs. The opening and the termination of the season has been in Germany ever since the beginning: Starting in August at the gamescom in Cologne - a gaming consumer trade fair - and finishing at CeBIT, the world’s largest computer expo.

In between these two cornerstones, ESL is filling the circuit with events at other trade fairs: last year, the stops included the Campus Party in Sao Paolo, Brazil, the Anime Coms and Games show in Guangzhou, China, and the Comic Con in New York, USA. Only the event in Kiev, Ukraine was not held at a fair, but at the Cybersports Arena.

It’s not that ESL didn’t do well at these events, the opposite is the case: last year’s sponsorship partners like Volkswagen or Deutsche Post certainly would have had less interest in a deal if there wasn’t this huge amount of publicity which you can gain from a strong representation at an important trade fair. Viewers are basically gained on the fly-by: They are just stuck at the ESL booth because of the loud and attractive performance as well as game commentary.



Weighing profit and risk

Intel Extreme Masters have profited multiple times in the last years from going to exhibitions, from accepting high booth fees and limited space. Now the boomerang is coming back and hurting the world championship: The ESL’s dependency of the trade fair organizer has lead to the cancellation of IEM China.

Other companies are not that dependant: MLG, NASL and IPL try to book hotels or event halls at their locations. DreamHack is a trade fair of its own, if you want to see it that way. ESL knows how to run events completely on its own as well: They have done that for ESL Pro Series finals for years and that was the way they handled WC3L finals back when Warcraft was important for eSports.

It was back in 2008 when the terrible earthquake at Chengdu, China, crushed ESL’s plans for WC3L finals in that city and ESL barely managed to relocate the event over to Changsha. It wasn’t by any means their fault.

Unfortunate? Yes. Irrelevant? No.

This year, another very unfortunate situation forces ESL to completely cancel an event. Once again you could say this specific problem with all its prerequisites is absolutely unlikely to happen again, why should they even react and draw consequences.

Sometimes, it’s just the trend that matters. After all side-effects of the cancellation are handled, ESL’s decision makers will have some extra time because of the non-existent event. Carmac already said he got some unforeseen vacation in Poland now. The minimum consequence is that Turtle Entertainment will be rigorous on selecting the trade fairs they work with in future, but maybe we will even see ESL slowly trending back to self-run events at eSports-only locations.

More information: Original news and ESL's statement