FACEIT's Michele Attisani: "ECS won't stop anytime soon; we bid for the Major"

After the teams finished their media duties on the day preluding the kick-off of the ECS S4 Finals, we were able to talk with Michele Attisani. The Italian, who began his involvement in esports with Quake, co-founded FACEIT and is currently the CBO of the company.

If they would win the Major bid, the focus would be on the community engagement, Attisani says

We managed to have a long sit-down with Mr. Attisani and hear his thought on a plethora of topics, with FACEIT's CBO putting emphasis on the company's community-centric approach. Attisani also confirmed that ECS already has plans for the next couple of years and that they have sent in a bid for the second major of 2018.

The average audience probably doesn't know much about you, you started as a Quake player, then startups followed and then you co-founded FACEIT. Tell us a bit about your place in FACEIT, what do you do and what's your day-to-day job like?

I'm Michele Attisani, the co-founder and Chief Business Officer of FACEIT and I lead the media team, so everything that goes on in terms of content production, events and so on, is under my responsibility. On top of that, I manage strategic relationships for FACEIT, that can be streaming companies, broadcasters, in general, high-level business-to-business relationships for the company.

When ECS launched, and I think you were actually the first CS league that actually did it, you announced revenue sharing. That kind of flew under the radar, a lot of people don't know about it and rarely mention it. Can you tell us a bit about that, how it has developed through the seasons and what the teams think about it?

I think it [the revenue sharing] started from the need that everyone had for more stability and more certainty in the scene. Back in the day, it was really hard for organizers like ourselves and a platform like ourselves, but also for teams and players to really think about how to build their path of investments and their business strategy around Counter-Strike. Events were just coming and going very quickly.

We spent a lot of time talking with [teams and players], trying to figure out what the best model would be—that is when we came up with ECS. It was actually a pretty lengthy process, it took almost a year from the first discussion until we launched the league itself. The structure we came up with was ultimately a co-ownership structure where the teams participating have shares in the league itself and they are also entitled to receive a revenue share from the league.

On top of that, we built a governing committee which comprises us, representatives of teams and players. So when it comes to the strategy of the league, we really have open discussions and everyone brings their input to the development of the league itself. From that standpoint, it has been really successful for us because we really found great partners. The teams and the players feel a lot more invested into ECS and they have really been helpful in shaping the league and taking it to where it is today.

I think in general, especially talking about this event, it's something different compared to what we are used to in esports. They also had quite a significant input in deciding to do this event in Cancun, a different environment, and obviously, we are thankful for that. We feel that when everyone is invested, everyone brings more value to the product itself.

You mentioned teams having a share in the league, how does that work with teams being relegated and new teams coming up? Is moving towards a more stable, closed format, without having a relegation structure, something you are thinking moving forward? We see the LCS (League of Legends) and the OWL (Overwatch) doing it now...

I think that, for us, having a grassroots component has always been key to the success of ECS. You know, ECS has qualifiers, starting with open qualifiers with more than 1000 teams participating, leading all the way up to the Development League and then to the actual main league. So far, the structure has been working really well.

In terms of equity, the way it works is that when a team qualifies for the main league, they are automatically eligible to receive shares in the league itself, and then, if they get relegated, they have a certain period of time to qualify again before losing their equity. If they fail to qualify after a number of attempts, at that point they lose their stake in the league. That's the current structure.

Talking about franchising, we are always open to new ideas, I think that we will definitely keep an eye on what is going to happen in the Overwatch League and in LCS, and we are always having pretty active discussions with the teams and the players about what we feel would be best for the scene. So far, everyone is pretty happy with the current structure, so there is no plan to change that at the moment.

One thing that has been a hot topic of discussion for the last year or so has been that both ECS and ESL Pro League moved to YouTube. Some people say that that is not healthy for the scene, even some players stated things along those lines, can you address it and say how it works from your point of view, how was the decision made and how it has been working so far?

I think that obviously there are pros and cons with every platform you go to. We feel that YouTube is a really solid partner for ECS. Actually, in terms of actual viewership, the numbers are comparable to the numbers we had on Twitch last year, there wasn't a massive decrease in viewership or anything like that.

I think that a lot comes down to what users are used to. There is obviously friction in changing from one product to another. We understand that and we are always trying to mitigate that part. At the same time, I think that what we were able to deliver in terms of value by working with YouTube is still quite massive. We started this partnership with the intention of not only putting the content on the platform but also working together in making the platform a better product for esports and for ECS. And we did some, I would say, some pretty significant processes.

Firstly, YouTube has a very solid infrastructure and a good player that allows for really high-quality content, allows live rewind, features that are pretty nice and useful for people that want to watch esports. Especially for events that have 10 or so hours of broadcast a day.

On top of that, we developed some exclusive new features, the first one was all the widgets that we released in June for our finals at Wembley, now the viewers can find all the information about the tournament directly on the YouTube page, with all the brackets, all the results, all the schedules. Highlights of the teams, players and so on. We already saw an increase in engagement of the viewers due to the release of that feature.

Now, we just announced it today [yesterday], this weekend we are going to launch loot drops on the channel, so everyone that links their FACEIT account on YouTube will be eligible to receive drops, similarly to what Valve has been doing with the Majors. We know that is definitely a community favorite feature, and, hopefully, the fans will enjoy that.

As a league, most of your content is online CS, and getting viewers for CS in general, but online CS especially has been pretty tough. What were and what are the future plans to combat the online viewership dip and how you want to get people engaged?

I think that when it comes to ECS, one factor that we always keep in mind is the actual quality of the matches and the teams participating. If you look at ECS, it's only 10 teams per region, which obviously makes for much higher quality matchups. It's also a bit less content, but it's higher quality content from that standpoint. You don't see a lot of super-one sided matches, it's always pretty interesting to watch. That is one aspect of it.

On the other hand, what we are trying to do always is create a nice and entertaining atmosphere during the broadcast of the online season. From the environment of the studio, which was built to create a much more relaxed atmosphere compared to arena events or live events, to the fact that we obviously have James and Dan and they are quite good at talking about things even if they are not specifically related to Counter-Strike, and they can really entertain the community.

Also, from a content point of view, we always try to make the show more as a general form of entertainment for CS:GO fans rather than having it too strict, serious and therefore maybe boring when it comes to a lot of days of broadcasting and gameplay.

The ECS S3 Finals filled out the Wembley SSE Arena

Let's touch on Cancun, picking this location. How did it come to this, was it always an option to go somewhere out of the classic regions, was that the plan from the start for this season? And why exactly here?

We got here starting with two main things in mind. One is, we really care about the player experience and the competitive environment which we can create at events. That was one factor, it's always a significant factor, one of the top two factors. The other one is the quality of the content which we can produce, and therefore we can give to the community and the fans watching at home.

While we think that having a crowd and fans coming to the live event is nice, we don't think it's necessarily mandatory as long as we can focus on the first two things, and that is what we decided to do here. Especially considering the fact that this year there have been a lot of live events and the players have been traveling a lot and they are also a bit burnt out from this competitive year.

Here, we managed to create an atmosphere which is really relaxed and puts them in the right mindset to perform at their best. Especially considering this is the last large tournament before Christmas and the Christmas break, we thought it was a good idea to try and create an environment which is really nice for the players, also in terms of location. Having great weather, the beach, and this hotel resort which is all-inclusive.

It's actually a funny thing that even some players that didn't qualify decided to come anyway, I'm sure you guys have seen some. Some of the players will stay here after the weekend and the tournament to spend some time with their family, with their girlfriends and so on.

Obviously, by taking this decision, this wasn't something we felt that we could decide unilaterally, we obviously spent quite some time discussing with the teams and mostly with players, trying to understand if they are interested in having an event with this type of an environment. The feedback was actually super-positive, the players were super excited about having this kind of a setup for the event and that's why we felt comfortable moving forward with something that is definitely... Different.

Touching on FPL, there have been some changes to the process of getting into FPL, with all the hubs you have been adding to the structure, that are run by other people for specific countries, for example, the Swedish Pro League. Do you have an outlook on how you want it to progress further, is that the direction you want for FPL, having more regional stuff that is kind of outsourced to other people?

The direction with FACEIT is always to serve the community in the best possible way. Something we learned is that different communities have different needs and more homogenous interest amongst themselves, rather than across the board. That is something that developed quite naturally, in terms of having different hubs and different communities that wanted to create their own competitive environment.

Obviously, these communities create a much stronger connection to the grassroots and the ecosystem, being regional based or whatever they are based on, than we could ever provide as FACEIT. The goal has been to give them the right tools in order to be able to create this community engagement and ultimately our goal is to support them, also giving them a path to some competitions, for example, FPL. I think FPL is a good example from that standpoint, but we are still in a very early stage of that process. This could potentially apply to more things, without giving out any spoilers.

We have done a lot of interviews with other tournament organizers and we know that a lot of them submitted bids for the second Major in 2018. FACEIT and ECS are not mentioned a lot when that comes up, mostly it's ESL and DreamHack that people are talking about. Did you submit a bid? What are your thoughts on the process?

I think that we are definitely interested in the live event side as well, we had two season finals at the Wembley Arena, the last one was sold out, it was a very successful event. You know, obviously, we would be honored to be able to host a CS:GO Major. I'm sure you guys know, we have been involved in the scene from the very early days, starting with the FACEIT online cups, and it's actually quite funny that a lot of the players that are here now competing for millions of dollars now, used to participate in those cups that had $1,500 in prize money. It has been quite a ride and obviously, we would be honored to be able to host a Major at some point. We definitely keep in touch with Valve, trying to make sure everything we do pleases them.

And yes, we did submit a bid for the Major.

TSM was victorious at the FACEIT League Stage 1 Finals in London in 2015

If that bid would be excepted,—we have seen different things experimented by different organizers at the past 11 Majors—, is there something you would like to do differently or is there anything you would like to change? What would you be focused on? I mean, since you submitted a bid I guess you have already defined what you would do in that case...

Yeah, definitely, I don't want to talk too much because we don't even know if we are ever going to do one, but there are definitely things we would like to approach in a different way compared to other organizers, starting from how the overall engagement and involvement of the community itself would work.

I think that's the main point for us, we are community first as a company, that is our DNA and we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the fans and the community that play on our platform and watch our content and therefore anything that we would do would be really focused on trying to provide as much value and as much engagement for the community as possible.

This is the ECS Season 4 Finals, you already announced that the Season 5 Finals will be in the Wembley Arena, what are the thoughts and the plans for the upcoming season? Is Season 6 confirmed as well, because I know that the YouTube partnership was announced as multi-year but I don't know how long exactly that is?

Yeah, we have a few years planned already for ECS so we are not planning to stop anytime soon. Potentially, the goal with ECS is really to make this a product that continues in the next 10-20-30 years. That is really the goal and that is why we constructed it this way, with a bit more complicated, sophisticated framework.

We have said already that we will be back at the Wembley Arena, we are very excited about it because it's the third event that we do there, at this point we can always bring something new, something more and make a nicer and better experience. The last one was really quite successful, we were sold out, so especially for a UK event and Counter-Strike, it's quite a good result [laughs]. I think we will talk about it next year, but we will have some nice surprises for the fans and the community.

We touched on a lot of topics, is there anything you wish to add, any special thoughts or anything before we finish off the interview?

I think, in general, I like to see that there is still a lot of potential things that can be done with Counter-Strike. It feels like sometimes, looking at tournaments, it feels like the scene, the content and so on is getting to a certain standard and is struggling to get to the next level a bit, but I think that there is still a lot of room to improve the experience for the fans, for the community, for the players and we will be striving to be at the forefront of that, always make additional investments, putting all of our creativity in trying to make it to the next level.

Even if maybe some fans will think that there are a lot of tournaments out there, I think it's a positive thing. Competition is healthy and it helps the growth of the ecosystem, especially when it's linked to the development of the grassroots of the scene. Like ECS does, like FPL does. I think there is a lot more that we can do in that regard and hopefully we will be able to do a lot more next year.

Last, but not least, I'd like to tell all of the fans to link their FACEIT accounts to YouTube, we are going to give away 15 million FACEIT points which is an equivalent of three Fiat 500. It's quite a lot of FACEIT points, I hope that a lot of people will link their account and watch the content this weekend, get a chance to win the points as well.