burbunny about the Major: "It's a very tight time frame, hopefully that will improve in the future"

As one of the main people behind ELEAGUE, Christina "burbunny" Alejandre, was a big part of helping the tournament organizer rise in CS:GO's competitive landscape, with the Atlanta based events now part of the elite tier.

burbunny with Richard Lewis and Min-Sik Ko, the ELEAGUE comissioner

Before the semi-final matches of the playoffs kicked off, HLTV.org had a chance to talk to burbunny and heard about the departure of ELEAGUE's in-game producer Jason "Alchemist" Baker, deciding where to hold the Major and the difficulties of managing the schedule with the short notice given by Valve.

You had two seasons of ELEAGUE, Season 1 and Season 2, and now you came up with the ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier name, can you tell me a bit about that, why did that happen?

I think that we wanted a brand that stuck, you know, CS:GO is such a big part of our DNA and to just do Season 1, Season 2, Season 3... And it also got confusing, because we are also doing seasons of Street Fighter, so is Street Fighter technically our second season? It was like, let's get rid of the confusion, let's attach a name to it like we did for Street Fighter, where it's the Street Fighter Invitational, and there is the Overwatch Open, that's why we did it. It wasn't this big thing, it was just "ah, this calling things seasons is confusing".

Touching on Jason Baker, who was a part of the ELEAGUE thing from the beginning. He departed the production of this season before the end, can you touch on that a bit, how did that go down and how is he not a part of the project anymore?

So Jason got an amazing opportunity at Blizzard and it was a time sensitive opportunity, so it caused a lot of heartache for him and it caused a lot of heartache for us but unfortunately he had to leave right before the playoffs. It's not something that he wanted to do, but because the opportunity with the Overwatch team was time sensitive, he had to go. We would've loved to keep him through the playoffs, but he had such an amazing opportunity that we couldn't tell him no.

Let's touch on the Major, your pitch was for Boston and you got the next Major. Tell me a bit about deciding for the place, the venue and how it felt getting the Major confirmed?

Working with Valve and trying to figure out the right timing, the timing that they wanted, and also given we had to find a territory that had the right timezones so that people all over were going to be able to watch it and it wasn't crazy times in every single timezone, we were really focusing on the east coast. The winter is the height of basketball season and hockey season, whether it's collegiate or on the pro level and there are a lot of venues that were booked, especially for the amount of time that we needed it.

And the Agganis Arena actually came to us very late, and even if it would come to us early we would've gone with it initially. Boston is such a great town, such an amazing city, very candidly I actually commute a little bit between Atlanta and Boston, so I have a home in Boston as well, but it's a huge college town and I think it's ripe for big esports event to come up there. So, the minute we knew the Agganis Arena was available there was something in our brains that clicked—"this is the spot, this is where we need to be"—and that's why we are up there. We are very excited to bring esports to Boston in such a big way.

Tell me a bit about the scheduling part of it. Since the Major gets confirmed, how does the whole situation work for planning all the Minors, Major qualifiers and all that stuff? How did that work out with you and Valve?

When we planned out the Minors, you know, it's a very tight time frame that we had to work on and hopefully that will improve in future years, there will be a little more notice in the process. And I know that Valve are actively working on that, but because of the short time frame trying to schedule the Minors and make sure that people could get visa's in time so they would be able to participate in the Minors if they made it through the qualifiers [was hard]. We have a lot of good relationships with the partners that we are working with, so doing that was fairly easy, it was just trying to find the right times on the schedules.

And then we worked with Valve to kind of switch up the format for the Major qualifier and the Major itself, because usually they are about a month apart and now we are doing it all in two-and-a-half weeks. It seems like very intense two-and-a-half weeks but I think it also just makes sense for teams and schedules so they are allowed to qualify and then move directly on, versus qualifying and then waiting an entire month to actually be able to play next.

Touching on that, from the Major qualifier to the Major is about five days, and from the Major group stage to the playoffs there are four days, and the city changes, you are having the group stage here and the playoffs in Boston. So tell me a bit about that, in a way, it's the Boston Major, but half of the Major is in Atlanta. What is the feeling like, was that ok with Valve, with you, what was the idea behind that?

Yeah, I think for us, we have this amazing facility here at ELEAGUE and we have the ability to turn around games quickly, we have a whole production facility and why not leverage it. We have practice facilities and stuff like that, and this is also a place where a lot of the CS:GO teams that are participating are comfortable playing in. And then we thought - why not go to Boston and put a three day break. If we are compressing it all, do it in a three day break.

And if you look at any other sport, there are playoffs that take place all over and then they move to a final city and that is where the big event is and they make a big deal about that city, even though that's the city that is just the finals, right? So if you look at it from that model it's not really atipical from any other sport.

We mentioned the Minors before, the online qualifiers are run by CEVO, PGL is helping with the Minors, so how much input do you have in that regard, especially considering the recent uproar regarding the CIS Minor. How much do you feel that that is your responsibility to handle stuff and that everyone's happy?

In any event where we take responsibility we try to make sure that everyone is happy, but you know and I know that not everyone is going to be happy, ever, that just never happens. And so, we try to find the best solution that would make the most parties as possible happy and satisfied and we try to identify the right partners that would be able to support what we are trying to do.

Regarding the Major, obviously you are tied to Turner, TBS—how much is it going to be televised? Is there a plan about that?

The Major itself will be all-digital and then we will talk about other things having to do with the Major that will hit television, but not right now.

Lastly, except the Major that is obviously announced, do you have any plans for CS in the future, anything you can talk about?

Nothing that I can talk about, but as I said last year and I'll continue to say, there is always CS with us other than the Major. CS:GO is part of the ELEAGUE DNA, we love having the teams down here and we love having them compete. The formats of how we do things might change, but CS:GO presence, year-to-year, will not change.