ESL has confirmed that there will not be an Intel Extreme Masters tournament at gamescom, Cologne, this year. The company is busy with managing their partners' events WCS and LCS.
For the first time in it's eight year history the biggest German gaming trade fair will not host the IEM season opening. Instead of going to Gamescom in Cologne, IEM will start at the ChinaJoy trade fair in Shanghai in July. Second event of the season will be only in October, at the Comic-Con in New York. The community vote between Shanghai and New York was an ESL campaign gag after all, as was expected by many early on.
The announcement of Shanghai and New York is the first of a series of announcements to come for the 2013/14 Intel Extreme Masters season. Officially, it has not even been confirmed yet that League of Legends and Starcraft 2 will be the games of choice in this IEM season. The fact that IEM will miss out on gamescom this year, came surprising to the community. However, Turtle Entertainment of course will be present at the trade fair right at their doorstep in Cologne.
Riot and Blizzard instead of Intel
"ESL has other plans for gamescom", Micha? 'carmac' Blicharz only said this Wednesday about IEM not stopping in Cologne. What Blicharz doesn't want to say, but what he means is that Turtle Entertainment's employees are busy running two partner events at the trade fair. Firstly, Riot Games will bring LCS Europe to the trade fair. Riot is already running most LCS weekends in the ESL offices. Week 9 of the Summer Split of the League of Legends Championship Series is happening just one week before gamescom, allowing Riot to play the European Playoffs not in the studio but at the trade fair instead.
275.000 visitors came last year, and Saturday's tickets are regularly sold out early. Already back in 2012 Riot was using gamescom as their location for the LCS European Regional Finals, which was then hosted under the banner of Intel and IEM.
Photo: Turtle Entertainment
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Secondly, Blizzard will bring the World Championship Series Season 2 Finals to Cologne. The already announced end date of Season 2, 25 August, implies that it will be Europe holding the second set of the finals, after Korea holding it last week and before the America region in late October. Just as Riot, Blizzard is working with Turtle Entertainment for their European studio matches of the Premier League on a regular basis.
IEM's replacement from gamescom is not the first struggle Intel's eSport world championship has to deal with: After CeBIT's announcement of cutting down the entertainment branch of the world's biggest IT trade fair in Hanover, Germany, concerns about IEM's regular world final location were raised. In Hanover, however, there's still a chance left: IEM might find a spot at or next to the popular fair next year as well. Intel, ESL and CeBIT are currently in talks about that. In the meantime, WCS and LCS will have expelled ESL's premier eSport league from gamescom.
Key Dates:
25-28 July: IEM Shanghai at ChinaJoy
21-25 August: gamescom, Cologne, with WCS and LCS
10-13 October: IEM New York at Comic-Con
Source: IEM
