Fans and caster went vocal regarding ESL’s failure to provide adequate coverage for IEM Katowice Closed Qualifier matches.
The North American closed qualifiers are being held for IEM Katowice 2020 but the community is upset about the lack of coverage. Quite a few freshly minted teams are taking part in the qualifiers, thereby making fans are excited to see how they fair. ESL have allocated broadcasting slots to a couple of matches but certain well known teams missed out on it.
Spunj fired shots at ESL where he expressed his dislike for their broadcasting methods. He is upset for the fact that ESL are not giving up IPs for 3rd party caster who are willing to showcase the match on their channels, for their desire to hold control of the matches.
Let alone casters, fans are demanding for GOTV connection for the matches so that they can see it for themselves and not rely on neither ESL or other casters to broadcast. The hunger of the audience surpassed ESL’s offerings and they tried resorting to other well know broadcasters which did not turn out as they hoped it would. gAuLeS for one did not have access to the matches and even an independent caster of his stature had to stream HLTV logs which accumulated 30K concurrent viewers.
Streamers are not being provided with IPs and necessary permissions to broadcast cast the matches as a result of which fans were complaining of ESL’s stream chat which led to moderators blocking them. gAuLeS have agreed to use the overlays and sponsorships ESL desires, which more caster are likely to agree to as well leaving it is upto ESL to decide where they want to steer this coverage debacle to.
