Why is IEM no longer held in Katowice? Organizer: We were limited by the hotel facilities

The inaugural IEM tournament in Krakow ended with a historic victory for Team Vitality. The French team won the grand final 3-1, breaking FURIA’s winning streak after losing Mirage and taking control of Inferno, Nuke and Overpass.

IEM in Krakow attracted over 38,000 people. participants

The event attracted over 38,000 participants to the city, and at its peak the online broadcast was watched by 1,370,524 viewers, which is a record result for a CS2 tournament outside the Major rank.

The tournament marathon started on January 28 as part of the ESL Pro Tour: 16 teams started the competition in Stage 1, and then the best teams advanced to Stage 2 (January 31-February 3). In this phase, Team Vitality and Team Spirit dominated their brackets with a 3-0 balance, reaching the semi-finals.

The decisive playoffs (February 6–8) took place on the TAURON Arena stage. In the quarterfinals, FURIA won against Aurora 2-0, and MOUZ defeated G2 2-0. In the semi-finals, FURIA eliminated Team Spirit 2:1, while Vitality defeated MOUZ 2:0.

After the final, Vitality’s captain, Dan “apEX” Madesclaire, summed up the victory by saying that he was “making history” and getting closer to another Grand Slam.

Why did IEM move from Katowice to Krakow?

The move from Katowice to Krakow was supposed to be more than just a change of address. In his statements, Aleksander Szlachetko emphasized that after many years in Spodek, the tournament “has exceeded the capabilities” of the previous facility, and the larger arena is simply to give more fans a chance to see IEM live.

Where does the phenomenon of this event come from? Why are so many people interested in this?

Aleksander Szlachetko, Ddirector WITHmanaging ESL FACEIT Group Polska: It’s probably complex and the answer would be complex. I think that gaming itself has become one of the most important forms of entertainment in the last few decades, and gaming has developed into a professional part of competition, which is in fact what we do, i.e. e-sport.

A large base of players is the audience, those who come to the Arena and those who watch us remotely. This audience is growing every year because if we look at gaming, the group of gamers is becoming more and more diversified. It used to be mostly teenage boys, but now we are talking about a very wide group, represented by both boys and girls.

What prompted your organization to move the tournament from Katowice to Krakow?

It was a decision mainly related to the fact that we had simply outgrown Spodek. Despite great cooperation with the city of Katowice and great relations with the local authorities, our fans could not fit into this arena. Every year we sold tickets in shorter and shorter time, as I said, in the end it was just a few minutes.

Every year it was a ticket hunt, not a normal sale, so we had to find a much larger arena and such an arena is Tauron Arena Kraków. Additionally, we were limited by the hotel facilities. During the event, all hotel rooms in the entire Silesian agglomeration disappeared.

Does the city of Krakow support the organization of this event in any way? If so, how?

Yes. Both cities, Katowice and Kraków, are partners for us who support us very much in preparations for the event. Both the city itself and the sports infrastructure management, as well as Tauron Arena Kraków itself, are three parties, three teams that strongly support us in the organization, logistically, marketing and substantively.

They know the facility, know the city and help us tailor the event to this facility and the city in the best possible way.