The 36th season of ESEA Premier — sponsored by Mountain Dew and therefore known as the Mountain Dew League, or MDL — gets underway in a little under two weeks time in Europe, North America and Australia. The “premier” division of ESEA’s league system (also featuring Open, Intermediate, Main and Advanced), MDL features teams from across the globe, many of whom are ranked in the top 50 in the world. It pays out over $75,000 in prize money and promotes two teams, twice a year, to the ESL Pro League, where they get the chance to play against the very best in the world.
So, why is there is almost no buzz about the new season?
Each league of MDL features 18 teams, meaning it consists of 158 matches, plus 14 play-off matches. (In non-pandemic times the top teams from the play-offs qualify for the Global Challenge LAN to fight for promotion to Pro League; in 2020 the Global Challenge was cancelled and replaced with spots for the top EU and NA teams, with other regions receiving increased prize money). Yet the vast majority of these matches go by with very little interest. The final of Season 35 EU, a promotion match between Endpoint and Sprout, was watched by 4,727 people, according to escharts.com. For a comparison, Endpoint put up more than double that figure (9,591) in the quarter-finals of the European Development Championship the following month. Average viewing figures are only available for the EU play-offs (2,620 viewers), but it seems likely the figures for the league as a whole will be lower.
This hasn’t always been the case. Looking through the history of the MDL, it seems that viewing figures were strong as recently as two years ago, when viewership would peak in five figures even for the relegation play-offs. But something has clearly fallen off since, not helped by the loss of the Global Challenge to the pandemic. Yes, it is true that it is a step below the ESL Pro League, essentially a “second division” in that regard, but the teams that participate still have fanbases and are professionals in their own right. Most command full-time salaries and tournaments featuring these teams put up much higher viewing figures than MDL manages. For teams outside of Europe, where lower-tier tournaments are far less common and MDL makes up the bulk of their official fixtures, this lack of exposure is even more worrying.
One issue, especially during the regular league season, is the fact that the schedule is at the mercy of teams’ other commitments, and frequently changes at the last minute. Do you want to watch your team’s run? Well, if you go to HLTV, the number one resource for Counter-Strike esports, you will find that they typically don’t add MDL matches until the day before they happen. The official MDL schedule is almost always out of date due to teams postponing matches (usually at the last minute) to play in other tournaments, which means that the plan for each team to play two matches a week for 9 weeks often turns into a game of catch-up, where teams have to play several fixtures in the final week. The constant rescheduling of games is a threat to fans’ interest before you’ve even begun.
Another issue is broadcasting. It is true that ESEA runs an official stream (in English) for most matches, and allow casters to stream all their matches. But this is not the same thing as guaranteeing a stream will be available. Sometimes, especially with multiple teams playing at once, there are no streams, or only streams in certain languages are available. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that fans will lose interest quickly if they’re not able to watch their team. On a similar note, check out a screenshot from that final between Endpoint and Sprout:
MDL matches use the overlay built into CS:GO, whereas many tournaments now build their own overlays. Here, for comparison, is a screenshot of a match in another lower-tier cup last year, Nine to Five 6:
There is something to be said for the purity of using the game’s inbuilt GOTV overlay. But it is a missed opportunity for branding. From looking at the bottom image, I can instantly recognise it as Nine to Five without even looking at the logo on the left-hand side because of the colour scheme, whereas the context of the top image is not clear at first glance — is this MDL, or just a qualifier match, where casters also often use the inbuilt overlay? The information is available more easily too: much of the text is larger and easier to read, the ammo counter is moved to the centre, meaning I don’t have to glance to the bottom right and move my eyes away from the action to check it, and moving the series score to the top of the screen means they can put the tournament name and stage in its place — information entirely missing from the MDL overlay.
A lack of social media presence is also a problem. MDL highlights are posted on Twitter and Facebook, but from the main ESEA account, which results in low engagement; even big highlights received an order of magnitude less interaction on Twitter (look at the low numbers of retweets) compared to other platforms like Reddit and YouTube. Meanwhile the hashtag #MDL is full of content unrelated to CS:GO, as it is a somewhat generic term. The MDL website is even worse, as the “teams” tab is auto-populated resulting in coaches and analysts being listed as players, while the schedule does not keep up to date week-to-week.
As a point of comparison, I’d like to mention a similar tournament in a different esport: Rocket League’s The Grid (and not just because some MDL orgs also take part in it, such as Galaxy Racer).
The Grid is designed as a semi-weekly tournament between the top teams, with a reduced prize pool compared to the main regionals. But there are incentives for teams to participate, such as each team having its own stream — essentially a watch party for fans to congregate, and a great chance for orgs to please sponsors and put out more content. It has a dedicated hashtag on Twitter, highlights are regularly posted on multiple platforms, and as of this season, it even has a main broadcast which cuts back and forth between streams going on at the same time, similar to NFL’s Red Zone. While MDL is unlikely to have the same budget, there are certainly some ideas that could be borrowed.
So, I’d like to give three suggestions to improve the MDL:
#1: Make the schedule more regular. There ought to be some flexibility for teams to move matches around in exceptional circumstances, but MDL is a tournament in its own right and should be treated as such rather than an afterthought. Dedicated match nights with games at, say, 4pm, 5.30pm, and 7pm would be much easier to follow than matches being played any time and any day of the week. Since league matches are a best of 1, with a lower time commitment, teams should be encouraged to play them in the same week they are scheduled rather than “banking” matches and playing them at the end of the season, which results in a poorer viewing experience.
#2: Improve the broadcast. MDL broadcasts currently consist of the bare minimum and important information is hidden. Commissioning an overlay for MDL would help to create a distinct MDL “brand” for streams, and allows for opportunities to improve upon the GOTV player’s faults. In addition, orgs should be actively encouraged to stream their own matches in a similar way to how Rocket League’s The Grid is run. (Some do this already but I think it should become a core part of the experience). This would both allow orgs to create more content and fans to follow their favourite teams more easily.
#3: More presence. Currently outside of an out-of-date website and highlights posted on Twitter to an unimpressed audience, the MDL lacks any kind of social media presence as it is absorbed into ESEA’s own accounts. Regular content should be produced: a weekly highlights reel would be a good start and is well within ESEA’s reach given they produce highlights for ESEA Rank S already. MDL Pro Tips should continue and could leverage existing content creators; other tournament organisers have put together comms videos, 1v1s and interview content. This could then form part of an expanded main stream broadcast on Twitch as well as find an audience on YouTube and Reddit. Every time I log onto YouTube BLAST have posted a new video — obviously MDL is not on the same scale but it is a target to aim for.
MDL is the Premier Division of the ESEA system, and features many strong teams from around the world. It is time that it becomes a tournament which reflects that fact.
