Hi Steven, thanks for taking time to do this interview. Why don’t you start by introducing yourself, how you got started in eSports? What led you owning a professional team (Tek-9)? How did you get involved with organizing major events (AEF)?
Hey there, I’m Steven Leunens, 23 years old and I live in Belgium. I started gaming with Medal of Honor and when I changed to the Call of Duty series I also picked up an interest in management. After Call of Duty 2 started hitting off I founded TEK9 with some friends and took some management tasks. After a while those got so time consuming I decided to stop active play and focus solely on achieving bigger goals in gaming, which also included running our own gaming events.
Focusing first on the Antwerp eSports Festival, I know you had originally spoke to me at WSVG Dallas last summer that you were planning to organizing an event, but obviously things have changed quite a bit since your original planning. What initial obstacles and/or challenges did you have to go through in order to just get the event off the ground (besides the obvious release of CoD4)?
Well from concept to actual event is a long way, especially for an event of this magnitude. Once the concept was done we could start telling people about our plans and get them involved. We had quite a lot of obstacles on the road to the event but we managed to get past them. I’m not going into detail but perhaps it’s also good to realize that gaming in the Benelux is still in the startup phase.
After ‘officially’ setting up AEF, what projects, tasks, and jobs go into organizing an event of this size? When do you start constructing the venue? What size staff would you need? Where do you find skilled people to help?
We start the buildup three days in advance with around 10 people. When we get closer and closer to the event that amount adds up to well over 40 staff members and if you include the contracted parties such as the Hilton, light and sound, broadcasting and others this goes up to well over double that. Finding the right people to help is not that hard if you already know them through TEK9 and other projects. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Gamevibes is fortunate with such a great volunteer force helping out.
Ted catches up with Tek-9 CoD2 a few hours before their grand finals match against Pandemic at WSVG Dallas last summer.
Concentrating for just a minute on sponsorship, because I know a lot of people have asked me in the past, how do you get sponsors for something this big? The expenses of running the event, let alone paying gamers this amount of money, is enormous? What do sponsors look at when you approach them with this crazy plan to play video games in a hotel for a weekend?
Sponsorships are never easy and the first thing you need to make sure is that the concept is right. The expenses are, enormous and even with the sponsors the financial risk is big. The most important thing we had going for us is our extensive media plan and the lack of any decent events in the Benelux. The time was right for a good competitive event to spring to life in the Benelux area and sponsors were ready for something new.
There are a lot of people looking to break into the eSports industry whether it be through sponsorship or organizing events similar to AEF, is there anything you might recommend to them? What knowledge, skills or experience is essential to organizing a successful event?
The main thing you need is persistence. In this new market of eSports many aren’t ready for it yet and you’ll get a lot of negative responses from companies who don’t grasp the potential of eSports. Another thing I really value when trying to organize something gaming related is a good sense of what’s going on in the market. This is, in my eyes, the strength of an event like the ESWC and where the CPL found its downfall towards the end. The CPL was not in touch with the community anymore and starting doing this parallel to the community but not on the same track. It missed effect and we all know where that ended up.
WSVG Dallas was the last real big money tournament for the CoD series with maybe the exception of i33. How do you feel that AEF is the first real big CoD4 tournament of the summer? Was there any added pressure to make the event better than previous CoD tournaments?
There’s a lot of personal pressure to make the event better and better. I personally think the community would have already attended an event half the magnitude of the current event but it was my personal ambition to go above and beyond, as I try to do with everything. Yet I had to keep myself in check a lot to make sure I didn’t take five steps at a time, it’s far too easy to trip and land face down so taking it slow isn’t bad either. The biggest challenge was finding the middle way between the two and even there I feel I failed here and there with some nice things I wanted to realize but I didn’t manage to finish in time.
Steven cheering on Tek-9 moments before they won WSVG Dallas last summer
A total of 43 teams have been confirmed paid and attending AEF, are you pleased with this number? Is this more or less than you expected? What are your thoughts that only two North American teams will be competing at AEF? Do you feel the best international competition will be intendance?
I think we could say we have the worlds’ best Call of Duty players present. However I would have liked to see more US teams travel to the event but I can understand why they can’t make it. At one point it looked like we would have five US team attending which would have been a great number but with Pandemic and EG we have the two best US teams anyway so the level of competition is high. And as far as signups go I would have been happy with 32 teams but had to increase due to the high demand so no complaints there.
Most tournaments use a single groupstage format followed by a double elimination bracket. What was the deciding factor to use a double groupstage format followed by a standard double elimination bracket at AEF? What are the benefits of using such format as opposed to the ‘standard’?
It wasn’t really a question of what we preferred. Because we increased the teams to 48 we couldn’t run a normal bracket so we had to find a solution which fits into the schedule. With 48 teams you have 12 teams who reach 1st place in their group and go through. Doing that for the numbers two in each group would mean you have 24 teams and we all know you cannot do a double elimination bracket with that.
What are your plans for the future of AEF? Will it become a yearly or bi-yearly event held in a single location similar to the old CPL format, or is this just a single event?
For now the plans are to run the event in the same location, at the same date and with the same concept – once a year. However after this year we will evaluate everything and adjust the concept of the event so things might change here. We plan to increase the scope of the event however and do all the things we wanted to do but didn’t have the time for this year.
Moving on to your position as CEO of Tek-9, where do you see the Tek-9 brand going in the next few months leading into 2009? With multiple championship divisions is there a possibility for expansion into other games?
I don’t see us adding more divisions any time soon but more strengthening the current ones. We are actually restructuring the internal organization a little bit which should help achieving some goals. With the support of Gamevibes behind the team we are constantly trying to make it more professional.
Suspending reality for a minute, what is one thing you would like to bring to Tek-9 in 2009? Do you have an ultimate goal or objective for the team and organization?
Can’t really come up with something I already set out as a goal besides further professionalization but if I could make a new goal I’d have to say sign a big sponsorship deal with a non-gaming related company.
I’d like to thank you Steven for taking the time to complete this interview, do you have any last comments, announcements, or shoutouts?
I would like to thank all our partners for AEF and the other brands of Gamevibes as well as the entire crew making everything possible. Thank you for the interview Ted!
That's a very well done interview... I can't believe how many teams are going to this thing. I like the videos... their manager is crazy, good luck everyone.
