Following Intel Extreme Masters’ ESL eSports tournament in San Jose, ESL proudly announced they brought in 6,000 attendees on Saturday and 6,500 on Sunday at the SAP Stadium in downtown San Jose. The SAP Center usually serves as a hockey arena, but last weekend, the arena was used as a split stage for the two-day League of Legends and StarCraft II tournament.
Online, via Twitch, over 4,000,000 viewers checked out the matches. In the end, Intel Extreme Masters San Jose was where Cloud 9 and JoonHo ‘herO’ Kim were crowned as respective winners of the League of Legends and StarCraft II competitions. For these matches, a $75,000 prize pool (50K for League of Legends and 25K for SraeCraft II) was up for grabs.
“The event can only be labeled as historic,” said Michal Blicharz, Director Pro Gaming at ESL in a post-event mailing. “We had never done anything like it in the US – in terms of magnitude, number of fans or streaming results on Twitch. It’s a stepping stone towards doing even more impressive things.”
To check out the action and the energy behind this event, the official photo album of the event can be found here at this link.
