Nick

I- i have no words

So over 500+ teams played an @ESEA league in season 56, which functionally was a multi-month long "qualifier" to a 16 team, $33,000 prize pool event in the form of ESEA Finals. ESEA previously expected the entirety of this bracket to be covered by @HLTVorg. Quarterfinals+ only💀

Honestly @HLTVorg I don't even know what to say. The logic behind covering the top 12 of advanced to only top 8 of the finals (when the prize money is split between all 16 teams) is poor and comes at such a dissapointment. I understand you hide behind the excuse of not wanting to create so many HLTV team/player profiles BUT in this case I feel like a mistake is being made. Why is a 33,500$ 16 team tournament getting only HALF coverage?! ESEA is a long time reliable TO putting up a lot of money to win. Surely a handful of team profiles and 2 days worth of single elim bo3's isn't out of your scope to cover considering this is technically where the "open qualifier" got us to. A lot of these teams are already on the VRS and my team is 1 game away with our whole team already having HLTV profiles. All teams are recieving prize money. (Yet another excuse hltv has used to not cover games in the past if the game was not for prize money) Considering HLTV is the central hub for Pro CS2/The VRS and is plastered in gambling sites (ones that infringe on the Counter-Strike IP that Valve has banned TO's from using as sponsors btw) I refuse to believe this is a budget problem. This FEELS like a "we don't want to" problem. How are smaller scenes supposed to grow and become "pertinent" in HLTV's eyes if all smaller regions are just fighting for their life to have a handful of games covered. I don't blame @ESEA at all as hopefully they did everything in their power to make it work. I thank them for the wonderful job and effort they have put in to try and bring VRS to all regions. I know their hope was to have the entire finals covered every season. Guess we'll have to work even harder for it but IMO covering a small portion of a single elim bracket everyone spent 2+ months fighting for is a slap in the face. One day I'm hopeful the coverage issue in non EU regions is solved by @CounterStrike My final thoughts are this is a larger issue than one event or JUST the NA region as I've stated time and time again. A biased FOR PROFIT journalism company like HLTV should NOT be the main and only source of data colleciton and rule enforcement for the VRS/TOR if they are limited by funds. I doubt anyone disagrees with that.