DreamHack exec on pitching for CS:GO Majors, the competitive ecosystem, and building DreamHack in the U.S.

In 2016, esports organization DreamHack hosted its first event in the United States, DreamHack Austin. The event also marked the first time DreamHack had expanded outside of Europe, with the main features included a 2,000-strong BYO PC LAN setup, side activities, and competitive gaming tournaments.

This year also saw the DreamHack Masters Las Vegas Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament hosted at the MGM Grand, which Yahoo Esports covered. While physical attendance numbers did not fill out the venue, the online viewership numbered in the hundreds of thousands, cementing DreamHack’s continuing relevance in esports.

Yahoo Esports interviewed DreamHack chief product officer Mike Van Driel on the increasingly crowded Counter-Strike tournament space, why DreamHack has not held a CS:GO Major recently, and Valve’s approach to tournaments.

DreamHack has been hosting Counter-Strike tournaments since version 1.6. The competitive scene has seen increasingly prestigious events crop up every year, and Van Driel acknowledges that oversaturation is becoming an issue in pro CS:GO. In a space where teams are forced to pick and choose which conflicting events to attend, where does DreamHack fit in?

“When it comes to our events, we have a two-pronged approach,” he said. “We see a lot of oversaturation…where teams have to travel so much, they’re playing so many matches.

This year, we have two of these DreamHack Masters events…those are the events where we target having every single of the best teams in the world. But our other events like DreamHack Open, DreamHack Austin, we’ve got like G2, Immortals, Cloud9, Team Liquid. They’re not all of the best teams and we’re not trying to do that with our festival events.

“We don’t necessarily want to rely on having the best teams… At Leipzig, if you go by the hltv.org rankings, the top-rated team was the 22nd team in the world. But we still had over 100,000 peak concurrent viewers, great engagement on site. Really, the hope is to have DreamHack Masters be this top-tier event, but DreamHack Astro Open being this kind of pro-am.”

Van Driel agreed that more competition in the space was ultimately beneficial to the audience, even if it meant more organizations were bidding to host CS:GO Majors. DreamHack’s last Major was held in Cluj-Napoca in 2015, and the organization has not announced one for this year. Similarly, competitor ESL vice president Ulrich Schulze recently spoke about about the situation in a Reddit AMA.

“It’s kind of difficult to answer,” Van Driel when responded when asked about the topic.

“What we’re trying to do is have a predictable event calendar… For us, we don’t really need to have a Major. What do we want to focus on? Do we want to focus on doing pitches to win a Major and having that event that’s at the right time of the year, and if we don’t win the Major we don’t do it? Or do we want to do a DreamHack Masters event in Malmo with the packed arena, all the best teams, and an amazing atmosphere? For our business, it makes much more sense to have a predictable event calendar, not be reliant on a Major.

“Are we disappointed that we haven’t run a Major for that amount of time? Yes. But at the same time, we can host hugely successful events without needing that, which is great. And going forward, now that we’ve established what we’re currently doing, we have a lot more bandwidth to be flexible and do more events that aren’t necessarily recurring, but doing [them] in the case we can win a Major.”

He added that moving forward to 2018, DreamHack is still “very keen” to pitch for CS:GO Majors and has made that a primary goal.

“But our bigger goal is actually having a predictable event calendar for ourselves… for our business that’s a lot more sustainable and reliable than waiting a few extra months to only focus on winning Majors,” he said.

Valve’s approach to handling of the competitive CS:GO scene has been quite hands-off, even compared to how it handles Dota 2 esports. The approach has evidently paid off, as Van Driel expressed satisfaction with their methodology.

“I think it feels like what they’re doing is good,” he said. “I think it’s important to actually allow new parties to come in. At the same time, you don’t want to go too far in the other direction. Certainly what Valve is doing good is [being] open, and they’re allowing all this competition. And I think that’s what working well, the fact that PGL can come in and win a Major. That’s good for everybody.

“There’s a lot of fans out there that would’ve loved to see ESL One Cologne be a major, and I expect ESL One Cologne to be a successful event without being a Major. I think in the long run in the long run that’s where esports should get to be. You don’t want to be just dependent on [the Major cycle]. You need all different revenue streams.

“It’s a pretty balanced approach. The way Valve does it actually brings in the players of the game to esports in a good way. Even if a tournament organizer isn’t running a Major they actually still benefit because more Counter-Strike players are getting introduced to esports.”

On the topic of expansion plans for outside of Europe, Driel described a quality-over-quantity mindset.

“What we want is to establish our foothold in both the events in US and Canada. It’s not about the number of events, it’s just about doing really good ones. We want to keep those [existing] events and make them bigger, as opposed to doing more events.”

The upcoming DreamHack Austin 2017 will be a return to the city for event. Multiple tournaments will be hosted, including competitions for CS:GO, Hearthstone, Street Fighter V, and Smash Bros. The schedule is set with the action to start on Friday, April 28-30.