Korea is often seen at the capitol of Starcraft and Starcraft II, and it’s hard to argue against that. It is important, however, to remember that eSports are pretty big across Asia as a whole. For example, today broadcasting company eSport TV Thailand announced that it will be holding a StarCraft II tournament from August 8th to the 19th.
Featuring a massive prize pool of over $100,000 USD as well as 32 of the best SC2 players around, the Starcraft II Open Season 1 will be broadcasted from Bangkok, Thailand with a live studio audience similar to the GSL. A major difference between this tournament and the GSL, however, is that the players will play online and the audience will actually get to interact with the gamers.
Registration for the tournament will begin on May 15. Any progamer is free to sign up, but eSport TV Thailand will have the final say on who gets to play. The full player list will be released sometime in June. The actual format of the tournament will follow a Single Elimination 32 Player system with random seeding. One interesting aspect of the Starcraft II Open Season 1 is that there will be 2 showmatches between players whom the audience picked. This you are sure to see the fan favorites duke it out.
The primary sponsor and host of the tournament, eSport TV Thailand, wishes to differentiate their event from others by including an unprecedented amount of viewer interaction—the audience will affect the players in the 2 showmatches while subscribers will be able to win random prizes, including coaching lessons and gift vouchers.
Another similarity between the Starcraft II Open Season 1 and the GSL is that there will be a free medium quality stream along with a paid HD stream ($9.99) that includes access to the VODs.
To check out all the details, click here.