Bastian Veiser: There’s no doubt, that the ESL Pro Series is still important

ESL Pro Series Productmanager Bastian Veiser: We’ve already made a statement on TL as a reaction to that. We’re sorry that the problems with the prize money aren’t solved yet and it’s quite frustrating that we didn’t achieve 100% of the pay-outs yet. We’re working on it and, like we mentioned in the statement before, we were able to re-establish our situation and make it better by 50%, compared to the last year. We hope to clear it out as soon as possible and further discussions won’t be necessary anymore.

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How much did this problem damage the image of the ESL Pro Series, which counts as the german royal league?

It’s not a secret that we’ve had problems with the prize money for a long time and we’re seriously concerned about that topic. Throwbacks, like the retirement of GoOdy, are likely to continue as long as we won’t pay-out everything on schedule, that’s for sure. But on the other hand, we already paid 2.517.970 Euro to the EPS, as we’re currently in the 22nd season of the Pro Series. Therefore our confidence issues aren’t that big.

 

I think you should ask in a different way. There’s no doubt, that the ESL Pro Series is still as important as it used to be 5 years ago. It’s the internationalisation of eSports that is responsible for the lack of coverages on big community-websites. Let’s be honest: the former biggest, german scene-websites have exactly the same problem. Internationals, like Team Liquid and Co. are running the business.

 

We’re able to serve both sides as the Intel Extreme Masters represents the big brother of the Pro Series in the ESL. The german newcomers are the basis but the main focus lies on the IEM, no doubt. In fact, the Pro Series made it to ZDF (Editors note: one of the biggest TV channels in germany) on Television – but totally disappeared from scene-websites.

 

The ESL Pro Series is the basis and the centre of the german eSport.

Photo: Turtle Entertainment / esl.eu