CPL vs ESWC : une guerre froide ?

Let’s start this article with a confidence. For several long weeks, we wanted to write something about the unofficial "war" which is currently taking place between Ligarena and the CPL. Despite its interest, this colum remained for a long time without any author. Actually the "yard" was quite difficult to lead. But today we’re taking up the challenge and maybe we will manage to make the workers of korean ship-yards turn pale. But in order to build our written Queen Mary 2, we will try as far as possible to bring up the right questions preventing us from choosing a point of view without emphasizing our arguments.

In order to manage to write something useful, we will firstly consider the strengths and weaknesses of each protagonist. Then we will try to define the problem itself. Have we exaggerated the influence of the World Tour’s announcement made by the CPL ? Can two big international events occur at the same time ? Who will lose power and money ? If we would be more pessimistic we would ask : does the bell toll for the e-sport even with its potential ? We will let the people who make what esport is today talk about this conflict... if they wanted to obviously.


The CPL, an organisation, a story

The Cyberathlete Professional League has a very strong image for players, whatever their level is. Indeed, those three letters are engraved in every brain and we use them for everything. Who has never heard : "Do you think you’re playing at the CPL, you evil newbie ?", "Let’s do a CPL eco dudes!". The objective admitted by many players was to fly to Dallas and to win a CPL. Many are those for whom it just stayed a dream. Since June 1997, the CPL has managed to develop this image of an event as difficult to reach as the Saint Graal. During CPLs occured many marvellous matches with young kids who did not fear anything. Everybody remembers X3 vs NiP or for those who do not, those two teams remained true legends.

The other great strength of the CPL is quite obvious : it is the pioneer on the market. Anybody would say it, when a company is the first to launch a product or a service, it starts with a strong advantage and will keep it if it manages to be quicker than its competitors. Many examples exist such as Coca Cola, Mc Donald’s etc. Even if you are for Ligarena, it appears clearly that the CPL was the first organisation to create some events internationally with a strong quality and rigour never seen before. Maybe they have been outmatched since then but this is another debate, we will come back to it further.

The CPL is also the first company to welcome a female competition, during the GroundZero tournament, where 6 young women faced each other on Quake 2. GroundZero was the perfect circonstance for the CPL to improve the mediatization of its events by presenting them to the general public thanks to an attractive location : Manhattan, the best-known district of Big Apple, the huge city of New York.
But the United States are not the world, at least they are not for the international events, that is why the CPL had to react quickly by flying abroad. Then we saw emerging the CPL Berlin, the CPL Copenhague and the prestigious CPL Cannes. Obviously, all these evolutions was bound with a sharp rise in cash prices given to players.

Then a crisis appeared, maybe a transition, we do not really know how to tell it. The CPL decided to forsake the CPL Europe and prefered focusing on the CPL in Dallas. The staff is not hiding the fact that if 2001 was an awful year for the CPL, the young company had to change directions and face many other tests. Once again... The growth of the World Cyber Games, which progress is mainly linked with the omnipresence of Samsung, and of the Electronic Sports World Cup are as many elements that are some news questions concerning the new path the Angel Munoz’s company has to take or not.

Finally let’s talk about the weaknesses of the CPL. Maybe this would emphasizing a polemic but the CPL seems to lose its influence, or at least the company is growing slower than the WCG and the ESWC. Moreover, the spirit of the event seems to have changed. At the beginning, was mostly an event of Quake before switching to Counter-Strike, as the community asked so. Some of you would probably say that there were financial reasons but we are sure that Angel Munoz is sensible to the development of electronic sport... until the anouncement of the game chosen for the World Tour and its 1 M$ : Painkiller. This is the first time that the CPL impose a game which does not make the unanimity. And is it necessary to talk about the absence of Warcraft 3 ?


Ligarena, the calm after the storm

Today, if we ask an objective population (meaning not us, french patriots) to choose their prefered event among the CPL, the WCG and the ESWC, it is the Electronic Sports World Cup that arrives first according to a poll led by esreality.com, a reliable source if we refer to the readers who come from all over the world.

But before they reach that success, the company had to face many problems, financial problems especially. Ligarena firstly got experience in France through the legendary Lan Arena. Those events were pretty linked with the growth of electronic sports in France. With some successes and fails, Ligarena gained a lot of experience which was necessary to create a new project : the Electronic Sports World Cup, which first edition took place in 2003 in the Futuroscope of Poitiers.

Impressed by the quality of the event in terms of organisation, mediatization and show, both journalists and players claimed that this event has been the best since the creation of e-sport. However, new goals appeared for Ligarena which can not make a mistake now. The ESWC 2004 has not disappointed many people thanks to qualifiers throughout the world (50 countries) and finals in France which were more wonderful than the previous one.

If the two ESWC were a success, one of the best explanation may be this link Ligarena managed to create with different communities. The example that illustrates it is the dilemma between Counter-Strike 1.6 and Counter-Strike : Source. According to many players, the game was not good enough for such a competition. That is why Ligarena chose not to substitute 1.6 for CS:S.

However, "Liga" must be aware that such a success is still dangerous. Remaining in the heaven of international events is not that easy and Ligarena has to do better and export its project in order to give the term "World Cup" its real sense. Indeed, the ESWC can not eternally take place in Poitiers. The choice of Paris for the edition 2005 seems to be a good thing for the credibility of the event internationally. But Ligarena must proceed with caution because another event in France in 2006 would be bad for ESWC and more and more people would wonder how far is its legitimity. Samsung understood it perfectly while exporting its concept of WCG abroad, in San Francisco firstly and then in Singapour this year.

As a transition, let’s go back to a point barely presented and which could bring another approach of the problem : the level of the competitors. Indeed, if the show out of the game is essential, the show IN the game is capital, as we saw in our first part.Then, the CPL may have a higher level than the ESWC. Two reasons for that. First of all, in order to take part to ESWC, you have to win a qualifier, and God knows that it could be difficult considering the country your team belongs to. A few weeks ago on sk-gaming, many were astonished to see that Sweden had only one autoberth for the ESWC whereas it is one of the country that possesses the best teams in the world. Actually the problem is financial as the local partners have to assume the flight of the winners. The second reason is simply the vocation of the ESWC : to be an international event, in terms of cash prices but also in terms of partakers. The whole world must be gathered in one place for the event. The interest of the competition may appear lower than other competitions. The CPL is positioning at a higher level. Teams which want to take part to a CPL must pass through a qualifier or pay the ticket of entrance, which many teams can not afford.

Finally, we have a lot of american teams and the best european teams that have found enough money to cross the Atlantic Ocean. So this part shows that maybe there are not any real problems between the CPL and Ligarena, as those two competitions have not the same philosophy. And it is certainly a good thing.


A conflict, but how ?

After some successful events in Dallas, the CPL might have got some pleasure with ease. As stagnation is the worst thing for the sake of a company, Angel Munoz decided to present a new project : the CPL Extreme World Tour and its numerous tournaments throughout the world, with a step in Dallas this Summer from... 6th to 10th of July ! Like the ESWC so. Here is the problem and we easily understand it. It is useless to say that many "journalists" are still having some doubts. Finally the tone rose up through press releases between Mathieu Dallon, owner of Ligarena and Angel Munoz, owner of the CPL.

What is hidden behind this problem ? Unlucky coincidence ? Angry attack of the CPL ? Firstly, we thought of this last solution because the tones used were really aggressive, almost warlike. However the two protagonists did not use insults. Hopefully. But for example, Angel Munoz talked about a "president’s tactless press release". Mathieu Dallon, in a press release confirming the usual date of the ESWC, talked about the CPL’s act "an admission of weakness or at least an intention of dividing the players." The owner of Ligarena did not hesitate to talk about a "taking of hostages by the CPL of the communities."

Do they lost their temper ? In an interwiew allowed to *aAa*zouzou during the Atomic Re-So, Mathieu Dallon affirmed that there was not any conflict between the CPL and Ligarena. The two companies had already signed too many contracts with partners to change their date. Truth ? Lies ? True Lies ? We made some interviews of the main protagonists in order to get more information.

The first person we made an interview with is not that well-known as he works for giving as much information as possible to communities about electronic sports. Midway, the boss of the editorial staff of GotFrag answered our questions.

*aAa* : CPL Summer and ESWC will both occur in July. Is it a real problem for the community? What would be the consequences?
Midway : Well right now the obvious consequences are that most of the top teams will attend ESWC. Recently though many American teams are starting to make the switch to CS:Source so I’m not sure that the CPL event will be as bad of a competition has originally expected, still only a few teams are signed up by comparison to previous years. Plus I expect most people to keep an eye on CPL even if they are watching ESWC just because CS:Source will be the game played in the future.

Angel Munoz told Mathieu Dallon that he did not expect Ligarena to make its event between the 6th and 10th July. In your opinion, is Angel Munoz honest saying that?
I don’t think Angel even considered ESWC. He was running his business and trying to find a date that the Gaylord Hotel would give him the best deal. After it was all done he realized it was the same date at ESWC but it was already too late. Is Angel guilt of neglect? Probably, but did he do it deliberately, unlikely.

How will you cover those events? Will they be at the same level of interest?
Right now it looks one of GotFrag’s top CS coverage people and myself will attend ESWC, while we send a larger but less experienced crew to CPL. MFAVP will still attend CPL and we expect to provide top notch coverage for both events.


What is your analysis of the growth both of CPL and ESWC?
It seems pretty blatant that ESWC has grown leaps and bounds recently while CPL may have even taken a step back at least for their local events in the USA. Their CPL World Tour really hasn’t been successful yet in terms of community support, but they have a year to go. I think both are growing and moving forward so I think its very relative in terms of growth.

Why is the World Cup so successful in your opinion?
I think is successful because it can attract top teams, but I think they can be more successful if they pick a strategy with acquiring those teams. Football’s FIFA uses a World Cup that’s strictly nation based teams selected by the country’s committee with regional competitions and it seems like ESWC is headed that way, but WCG already does that to a certain extent. ESWC also allow Club teams, like Football’s Champions League, to play which is confusing. I think they need to select a method and move forward with it, having a dual approach will only confuse main stream media. By selecting either method they could become stronger, not just in their sponsors and media coverage but in teams too.

Last year, the first price for the winners of the French ESWC qualifier was an autoberth for CPL Dallas. Now, we hardly imagine such a partnership between the two companies. What is the best situation? A monopoly? Companies cooperating?
Every sport has a governing body of some kind. FIFA runs Football (soccer), NFL runs American Football, NBA controls basketball etc. Without a governing body to control the competition in eSports we are left with these types of situations. The positive is that we are still growing drastically each year, but sooner or later a governing body of some kind will need to be developed or one league will need to become superior to all of the other competitions.

According to you, what is the next step for esport? What needs esport to soar?
I think one of two things needs to happen. One events needs to collect itself and the teams that play in it and create a system that makes sense. None of the current leagues/events are really leagues, they are more just open competitions or qualified events with tournaments. They aren’t leagues. We need a true league. The other option is for a governing body of some kind to run or collect the many events and have them create some sort of tour or season that would organize all of these events. Honestly I have a hard time seeing either happen with many of the roadblocks and stereotypes held by the people who run and hold the money in this community.

The anarchy ruling on the esport world seems to be a bad thing according to midway. The electronic sport needs a governing body controlling calendars and some acts of companies that make esport go ahead. According to him, the ESWC is growing faster than the CPL but Ligarena could make better if they change their method to select the teams. Even if the CPL seems to grow slower, when we consider the unsuccessful World Tour until then, the company still has some time to make things go in the right way.

Obviously, this article would be totally useless if we had not the points of view of the two protagonists : Mathieu Dallon from Ligarena and Angel Munoz from CPL. The first one accepted to answer our questions and reveal some exclusive information about this incident but also about his company.


*aAa* : Last year, the first prize for the winners of the french ESWC qualifiers was an autoberth for CPL Dallas. Now you seem to have some problems with CPL ("taking of hostages by the CPL of the communities"). What happened? Can’t your relationships get better?
Mathieu Dallon : It is true that we have always had good relationship with CPL. Today, their official position is to say that they did not know the date of the ESWC and moreover, the reservation of the site in Dallas did not give them any other choice. I just consider this official version, even if it is hard to believe. However, it implies that neither people from the CPL staff nor people in their professional environment are interested in international current events, availabilty of gamers and the media... That is a position they seem contempt with.

However this is not a point of no return. We are all improving as electronic sports professionals, in a young and fragile market over which no one person has control. Adding to that all we have created was possible thanks more to our passion than the effects of great marketing strategies later added to the equation. Deep inside me, because of my bitterness, I hope CPL is aware of its mistake. We still need, at least for a few years, advance in the same direction.


In order to grow, what does esports need ? Just one big company which will create big events (or at least a great deal of them)? Do esports need a company which holds a monopoly? What is the next huge step for esports?
First of all, electronic sports need a devolopment project in order to get bigger. I think that Ligarena proved in its actions that it has a project in mind. I’m thinking more towards the lines of the sporting rigor of the ESWC, its charter, its transparent relationships established with local partners, the games chosen as sporting competitions. But this would also include development of Cyberleagues France and Cyberleagues in the world next year CPL has a project with Painkiller that we could judge severely for its putting into effect, but that has the merit to exist. Nevertheless, I do not really understand either the WCG’s project anymore or those of other emerging organizations in Asia.

The keys to development of this environment are in the hands of creators of video games and not just considering the artistic and technical aspects. Creators possess the rights to their products. Today, those rights are essentially licensed to a publisher whose main objective is to sell the game after its release in shops. By default, the exploitation rights of a game in a sports context are not controlled (rights for organisation of tournaments, rights for distribution of images on TV, in a theater, on the Internet). In very rare exceptions, the editor takes charge of it, but not with enough interest. Everything has to be done in this sector, it is the next great step : the legal standardization of our activities.

The CPL seems to be avoiding France as we see none of World Tour step take place in France. Can we soon imagine an ESWC in the United States ?
I don’t think the CPL is avoiding anything. It just doesn’t have any flagrant opportunities. And to be honest, yes an ESWC Grand Final in the US seems quite possible.


How do you feel about the violent reactions to this problem? Do you agree with the people who think that two events taking place at the same time is bad for esports?
Yes, of course, and it was the purpose of my press release. We deplore this situation that divides the players, the media, and the sponsors. This reminded me of the first edition of the WCG in December 2001 that had chosen the date of the CPL Winter (which was not yet called that). It was the act of a challenger who wanted to bring sensation in the midst of the community.


What is Ligarena’s turnover and growth regarding last year? Where does it come from? What costs Ligarena the most?
Ligarena has known almost 100% of growth each year since its creation in 2000 but has never made any profits. The turnover does not mean a lot if it is the only thing considered. It should be known that Ligarena and its shareholders have invested until now nearly 1.2 million euros in order to cover the losses of the first four years. Our last trading year illustrates a turnover of 1.6 million euros. 80% comes from sponsoring and 20% from the rights to ESWC international licenses. All these incomes are systematically invested in the events. It is the events that cost the most, especially the renting of buildings and spaces, the renting of materials, the wages of people from the staff, and cash prizes. We are by far the world entity with the least means, compared to the WCG and CPL. That is why we have ideas, courage, and a huge capacity to grow.


Can we imagine one day Ligarena buying the rights of a game like the CPL did with Painkiller?
To my knowledge, CPL has not bought the rights of Painkiller but has negociated an overall agreement with the publisher, in which it brings a lot thanks to its sponsors (organization of events, communication, prizemoney) and in which the publisher yields a right of exclusiveness for the organization of tournaments. This is a model and a specific balance which was possible because the both parts were in position of demand. I can barely imagine this being possible with a successful game.

Concerning Ligarena, we obviously look to have specific rights for the
organizing of competitions. Besides, it is already the case with the ESWC However, having exclusive rights is not our objective because it is not the project we have in mind and wish to take effect in the world of electronic sports. Each side has much to win from the work of others, and especially from their success. I am for a healthy competition.


What is Ligarena’s greatest quality ? What trait is its strongest for you ? What are its weakest points ?
I prefer talking about what differs us from the others : for the ESWC, there aren’t any fees of registration for players, flights and hosting are offered to national champions, everything is done to emancipate the electronic sports and the gamers. We have created many standards in term of show, streaming of matches, and TV streamings. We put into effect that which we announce, we are transparent on our budgets. We take into consideration the international context in the choices we make... But do not be mistaken, I hold a lot of respect for the historical name.


We could be amazed to learn that Ligarena is not a powerful actor regarding the financial criteria. It is quite surprising if we look at the quality and the reach of its events. If there is not any declared conflict, it is possible that a kind of hostility because of this conflict. Real problem or not, the future will tell us through the next decisions of the two protagonists.

In order to reply to the point of view of Mathieu Dallon, we obviously needed the answers of Angel Munoz so that he could have told us his version and the problems bound with the CPL strategy. Unfortunately, the owner of CPL did not accept to answer our questions. In order to offer you the most complete transparency, here is what he answered us, through his press center :

"Unfortunately, the CPL or its president will not offer any public
comments in reference to any esports organization other than CPL.

We think it is unprofessional to do so, and therefore have declined your interview.

Your questions are speculative at best and have no real relevance to the growth of esports or its worldwide reach.


The CPL Press Center

Cyberathlete Professional League®"

Here are the questions that will allow you to have a point of view based on facts. You will notice that the questions were quite similar to those asked to Mathieu Dallon.

Last year, the first price for the winners of the french ESWC qualifier was an autoberth for CPL Dallas. Now you seem to have some problems with Ligarena ("their president’s tactless press release"). What happened? Can’t your relationships get better?

In order to soar, what needs esport ? Just one big company which creates big events or many of them? Does esport needs a company which has the monopoly? What is the next huge step for esport?

In France, the whole community prefers ESWC to CPL, without thinking that CPL has to shut down, that is obvious. But in the US, many players told us that ESWC was better than CPL, like the O’toole brothers from u5. How do you explain it? And how will you manage to change their mind?

What are your feelings concerning the violent reactions after your press release? Do you agree with those people who think that two events at the same time is bad for esport?

Ligarena’s headquarters are in France. Why haven’t you made anything in France for the World Tour, in order to show that CPL is at least as reliable as ESWC?

What is the turnover of CPL and its growth regarding last year? Where does it come from? What costs the CPL the most?

Can we imagine some negociations in the future between CPL and Ligarena that will avoid those problems? What kind of negociations ?

Without any doubt, CS is the most famous game throughout the world. Why are you trying something dangerous with PK, as the game is not quite popular? Why haven’t you made a World Tour with 1 million dollars for CS? Selfishness (to possess all rights for a game) ?

Conviction (to think that best pk or ut players have a best marketing power than CS teams) ? Or is it only some financial agreements that gave you many advantages?

What is the best advantage of Ligarena ? What is their strongest quality for you ? What is their weakest point(s) ?

However, we searched different sources that would give you some information about the CPL. An article seen on Wired news 3 years ago talks about the importance of partnerships made by the CPL and the huge stakes regarding the organization of events for electronic sports.


Conclusion

A future war ? Too much noise for nothing ? We might never know the real goals of the CPL in this accident. But now you can understand the problem far better. Maybe the dilemma for players would be worse for Warcraft 3 even if the ESWC has always been close to the community. For Counter-Strike, there must not have some hesitation, as the two companies chose different versions (Source for the CPL and 1.6 for ESWC).

Finally, communities would not be really divided this summer as the teams which would not be able to obtain an autoberth for the ESWC will fly to Dallas, if they can. The big problem will be the coverage of those events by the medias... and mostly the readers, heart of esport. The CPL may be forgotten by many european websites whereas the ESWC might suffer on websites like amped or gotfrag. But maybe this "unfortunate" accident will be good for the CPL which would announce the Grand Final of its World Tour in November, a very calm period for esport...