$15,000 AfreecaTV Champions Cup (1280 EPT Points)

Alphaxsc2

144 Posts

September 16 2022 20:06 GMT

Extremely excited to announce AfreecaTV’s first sponsorship of an EPT Tournament, the AfreecaTV Champions Cup!

Awarding $15,000 and 1280 EPT points, we look forward to hosting hard-fought and nail bitingly entertaining matches!

1st: 250 points
2nd: 180 points
3rd-4th: 125 points
5th-8th: 75 points
9th-12th: 50 points
13th-16th: 25 points

Qualifiers

These qualifiers are server qualifiers, players from all regions may play in as many of them as they like. There is no region lock.

Double-elimination, 3 spots awarded in each KR, EU qualifier, 4 spots in NA qualifier,16 qualifier spots total

For double-elimination qualifiers with over 16 participants: the bracket will be single-elimination up to the Round of 16 (Ro16). From Round of 16 onward, the bracket will be double-elimination.

Seeding rule: EPT Combined Standings from 2022/23 Season.

KR Qualifier #1: Thursday, Oct 20 7:00am EDT (GMT-04:00) sign up here.

KR Qualifier #2: Saturday, Oct 22 7:00am EDT (GMT-04:00) sign up here.

EU Qualifier #1: Wednesday, Oct 19 1:00pm EDT (GMT-04:00) sign up here.

EU Qualifier #2: Friday, Oct 21 1:00pm EDT (GMT-04:00) sign up here.

NA Qualifier: Sunday, Oct 23 7:00pm EDT (GMT-04:00) sign up here.

Group Selection

After the qualifiers are concluded and we have our 16 participants we will perform a GSL-style group selection where players nominate each other. Let’s see what happens here!

Main event

The main event will be held from Nov 3rd to Nov 6th. Exact times will be announced after the qualifiers conclude. 4 groups of 4 players each will lead into an 8 player single-elimination playoff bracket. You can find all infos on Liquipedia.

Sponsors

Huge thanks to AfreecaTV for supporting this event and frankly the SC2 scene for a long time! Do please give your support!

Rulebook
rules

Stream

http://play.afreecatv.com/alphaxsc2

We will only be hosting an English stream due to our sponsor's wish to consolidate viewership on one channel.

**edit : AfreecaTV has now opened this event to community/language streams - Pls message Mage#0596 or Sushi #7857 on discord if you are interested! Thank you. Do note that live-streams will be exclusively on the AfreecaTV platform.

Head Admins

Kashim
LadyAzylis
Migwel

Matcherino

Our tournament will also be on Matcherino! Check it out and support it if you feel like it.

Replay pack for the entire tournament (Main event and casted qualifier matches) available at $10. Proceeds go towards production costs.

Alpha X

For all Alpha X news, notifications, VODs, etc., feel free to follow us @
Twitter - https://twitter.com/AlphaXsc2
Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/alphaxsc2
Discord server - http://discord.gg/alphaxsc2
Website - http://www.alphax.gg

Want to support Alpha X if you are a fan of our events focused style of developing SC2 talent? We frequently organize events of all kinds to support our talents like Astrea, Zoun & RagnaroK etc and showcase other premier players. Support and more information via Patreon

lechatnoir

392 Posts

September 16 2022 17:43 GMT

Damn! That's cool!

Kashim

Poland1218 Posts

September 16 2022 20:20 GMT

Let's go!

Nakajin

Canada8989 Posts

September 16 2022 20:57 GMT

Wow, nice!
Am I to understand that it will be online?

Kashim

Poland1218 Posts

September 16 2022 21:09 GMT

On September 17 2022 05:57 Nakajin wrote:
Wow, nice!
Am I to understand that it will be online?

yes, online

Waxangel

United States33558 Posts

September 16 2022 21:57 GMT

Interesting to see AfreecaTV finally putting a high-level event exclusively on their platform. I wonder how viewership will be?

SamirDuran

Philippines895 Posts

September 17 2022 03:05 GMT

Big Shoutouts and Thanks to AlphaX and AfreecaTV!

TaKeTV

Germany1200 Posts

September 17 2022 16:04 GMT

On September 17 2022 06:57 Waxangel wrote:
Interesting to see AfreecaTV finally putting a high-level event exclusively on their platform. I wonder how viewership will be?

Obviously more events are great and they can decide on how they want to run stuff. I do believe that the community should stand against it though. This doesn't unite but split communities. Community streams / language streams have been around forever and is what keeps not only their local scenes but the scene in general healthy.

I won't ask our viewers to boycott it but I will for example not stand up for banning other languages.

- NarutO

Edit: I want to mention that this is EPT specific and I think this shouldnt be allowed for EPT tournaments

Durnuu

13322 Posts

September 17 2022 17:27 GMT

I certainly don't mind competition for Twitch considering it's the worst streaming platform available (along with trovo which is just a copycat

). Youtube still #1 by far

Poopi

France12909 Posts

September 17 2022 17:43 GMT

#10

On September 18 2022 02:27 Durnuu wrote:
I certainly don't mind competition for Twitch considering it's the worst streaming platform available (along with trovo which is just a copycat

). Youtube still #1 by far

Afreeca is worse than twitch though, it takes like 5s to load up a stream.
Twitch is decent when you are watching live, but watching past vods on it is painful, takes lots of time to go back / fast forward and stuff.
YouTube seems very good indeed, and you have vod already included. It’s actually perfect for GSL, you can directly watch past matches if you were late

Philippe

354 Posts

September 17 2022 17:56 GMT

#11

On September 18 2022 01:04 TaKeTV wrote:

Show nested quote +

I don't think Afreeca fancies viewership going to competing platforms, the powers that be might see that more than think about the community at large.

washikie

United States752 Posts

September 17 2022 19:04 GMT

#12

cool!

hjpalpha

Germany339 Posts

September 17 2022 19:57 GMT

#13

On September 18 2022 01:04 TaKeTV wrote:

Show nested quote +

my opinion on it:

i am not a super fan of it being only on afreecatv either
afreecatv is laggy and loads forever

and yeah community/language streams are kinda essential for the scene
and with several of them having exclusive stuff with twitch or not being able to stream on afreeca for other reasons this makes the platform decision even worse

on the other hand form an organizer point of view it is totally understandable that afreeca (apparently a sponsor of the event) will want to show stuff only on their platform

tigera6

3464 Posts

September 18 2022 06:48 GMT

#14

I mean, isnt GSL English cast is Afreeca-youtube exclusive? And they are also part of the EPT.

QOGQOG

834 Posts

September 18 2022 06:51 GMT

#15

No region lock? Count me in.

ExpatRights

53 Posts

September 18 2022 08:29 GMT

#16

you guys not supporting afreeca is just killing sc2 even faster, you know. as soon as blizz stops dumping huge money in....

Azhrak

Finland1198 Posts

September 18 2022 10:12 GMT

#17

Thanks to Afreeca & AlphaX for organizing more StarCraft II for us!

We will only be hosting an English stream due to our sponsor's wish to consolidate viewership on one channel.

Does this mean no community streams on afreecatv.com either? What about the qualifiers?

afreecaTV.Char

United States338 Posts

September 21 2022 02:19 GMT

#18

On September 18 2022 01:04 TaKeTV wrote:

Show nested quote +

I think you are 100% right, and it was our mistake in making this guideline. Sometimes we get caught up in our own internal goals and metrics that we miss out on what's really important. It took a very long time to get approval for this event, especially as we get more pressure to reallocate resources to other games with larger communities. However, we never could have made it here without the Starcraft community's support.

With that being said, we will be opening this up to community streams and other languages. Please work with Alpha X to get coordinated, and feel free to reach out to me directly if you run into any problems. For Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Japanese casters, please express your interests, but understand that we will be discussing with our respective regional teams that may want to produce their own coverage first.

Please note that live streams will have to be exclusively on AfreecaTV. I understand that this may be frustrating for some, but I hope you can at least understand our own position as a live-streaming platform. However, I think allowing YouTube VOD uploads after the live-stream is a very fair compromise.

With Twitch relaxing some of their exclusivity rules, I hope we can work with more members of the community. Not just for this event, but for the GSL as well.

I will not pretend that AfreecaTV is the best platform or provides the best service to everyone globally. We're still very clunky and outdated, but I think we've come a long way from where we were. I can at least say that they are working hard to build a more dedicated development team for the global service. Things will not improve over night, but they are planning some significant changes.

In the near term, it's important that our team gets feedback and data from those who currently have issues with the platform. Please connect with us and work with our support teams so that they can take critical information to our dev/network teams and provide a better service.