We happy to start on our blog a serie of interviews focusing on Esport tournament organizer. Whether they run local, friendly tourneys, online leagues or big, pro events, organizers always have a great amount of experience and tips to share.
Let’s start today with Konstantin Schmidt, founder and owner of Rush, a new breed of E-sports place in Germany. He’ll share with us his views and advices on everything Esport organization. Let’s fire the questions !
Hello Konstantin, can you introduce yourself to our readers ?
My name is Konstantin Schmidt, I am 23 years old and the founder of Rush e-sports center. Rush e-sports center is the first of it’s kind in Germany aiming to make E-Sports available to a wider audience by hosting tournaments for everyone on a regular basis.
What are your favorite tournament formats and why ?
A group stage played in double-elimination followed with a double-elimination KO stage. Why? We have teams with far ranging skilllevels. We feel this gives less skilled teams a fair chance to go far within the tournament.
As a tournament organizer, what are the main challenges and issues you have to face ?
The organization is key, everything simply needs to be on point. A minor delay here and there can cause overall delays of an hour or two. Next to that all hardware needs to run smoothly, the servers need to be running on point.
What are your top priorities, motos and tips to built a top notch tournament ?
Set up your gameplan and make sure you can stick to it – this mainly involves the schedule, people hate waiting. At the same time you have to be flexible and prepared for most “hickups”. Minor issues will always occure, you just have to be ready to resolve them quickly. This may be tough for the first 2-3 tourneys, but you get the hang of it. If it is a LAN tourney, entertainment during the breaks is a big plus for most gamers.
New business models such as paid registration and crowdfunding may change the way you build tournaments in the near future. Are your embracing those new leads ?
Our whole business is based on paid registration, allthough we try to have tournaments funded by sponsors as much as possible and thus be able to host tournaments for free for our customers. Crowdfunding is something we are looking into at the moment, but have not yet actively persued.
We recently saw new tournament format, with complex structures. The International 4 may be the most (in)famous example of this trend. Do you think Esports should explore new formats, or comply to the existing ones, already tested and widely adopted ?
Esports is mainly followed by young people who, as gamers, must be quick to adapt. This combined with the fact that it is a very young sport makes esports probably the best place to try out new things. We ourselves have changed our formats several times over the past months because we just felt we found better alternatives.
Any finals words of wisdom, for the people about to organize their first tourneys ?
Do not underestimate the organization going into these things and give it your best effort. You may feel like it’s a bit too much at times, but once it’s all ongoing and you see how much people appreciate these tourneys, it will be all worth it. And thank you for supporting this great sport!
Thanks Konstantin !
If you want to know more about Rush Esport Center, go check their website and Twitter.
If you want to be featured in our Interview series and share your passion for Esport event organization, just contact us !