My group started from Stuttgart with our fanbus. A fine bunch of people who rented a bus (thanks to the sponsors financing it at parts), and althought it was quite early (8am), we were already pretty hyped for the event.
Now that's a fine bus over there.
After an about 2 hour ride, fortunately avoiding all traffic jams, we got to the arena, and since the countdown had started a few minutes ago, we could already hear the fans shouting from the outside.
big stadium is big...
Getting inside is the real thing though, the arena is huge, and there are loads of people, The atmosphere was super dense, the hype was unbelievable, people cheering for their favourite teams, in general a lot of noise. I was trying to find fellow Liquipedia editor Ragnarork, but there's so many people it's hard to find anyone.
The screen was pretty big!
I guess everyone wanted to have this one
Holy f***, that's a lot of people :o
The first game i personally was super hyped for was EG vs Vici Gaming. I didn't expect it to be that stomp it was in the end though.
Not as good as i expected...
EG won pretty convincing, at that point i thought they would take it all. After that game i finally got to sit next to Ragnarork, who actually is a pretty nice guy.
Obviously needed selfie, left is me, right is Ragnarork.
Soon after this Nazgul decided to visit me up there at the plebs seats. Ragnarork was pretty hyped to meet him as well ^^
Nazgul even bought me some food which was pretty cool, unfortunately i forgot to take a picture though.
Obviously the esports event was not the only thing to do at ESL One though. There where huge tents behind the screen that held a lot of activities and booths of the ESL partners. NeedforSeat had some space there, my favourite team (Team ALTERNATE) played friendlies against random people from the crowd, FuDDx made awesome ballons and a lot of other cool stuff. There was also a lot of stuff outside the stadium, but i was more interested into the esports part.
The area behind the screen was huge, lots of space for activities.
Found a FuDDx with his awesome balloons.
When i was inside the arena, there was a pretty cool view on the crowd. I was there whilst the firstblood in the first fnatic vs Secret game happended, and it was super load. 10/10 would go there again!
The crowd was huge!
Also you could get rather close to the casters. They didn't stand a chance against the crowd volume wise, but at least they had some comfy seats over there unlike the analyst desk ^^
Seems rather lonely compared to the analysts desk.
For the rest of the fnatic vs Secret game i decided to take on a different perspective and went to the other side of the spectators space.
One could go up pretty far
The set looked superb in the dark!
Seeing the second fnatic vs Secret game live was glorious btw, it was a huge party up there, especially when Techies blew up the whole fnatic lineup in the Radiant jungle highground.
Starting day 2, i got a seat a bit more in the center with some friends. Also found another TL fan. Unfortunately i didnt find the time to get over there to say hi
Undisguise yourself, you had an Axiom hat.
FuDDx balloons are dope as f*** btw, just saying ^^
Up for the finals, EG vs Secret probably was the final most people had hoped for. With Secret stomping two Asian teams and EG going over one Asian team, both teams looked pretty good.
The cup was moved up a bit for the finals.
The teams are getting into the arena, people were so loud you couldn't hear anything anymore.
The finals unfortunately went the was of Secret, althought i had hoped for an EG win. Guess they were not good enough...
+ Show Spoiler [Those teams...] +
Secret
Evil Geniuses
After all the event was pretty cool, i hadn't been at a live event in a while, so i had quite some fun. Meeting Ragnarork and Nazgul was pretty nice aswell
Let me finish wish a shitty video of the final moment i did: