Chinese tournament organizer CGA and esports platform 5E Play announced that they will co-host a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive competition called FunSpark ULTI in China. The competition will feature a $300K USD prize pool, with eight international CS:GO teams including China’s Tyloo participating.
According to the announcement, the original schedule plan for this competition is between Dec. 1 – 6. Due to concerns related to live events during the COVID-19 pandemic, the government announced that there will be no international sporting events in 2020.
5E Play and CGA have co-hosted multiple CS:GO competitions in China including CS:GO Super League (CSL) 2016 and 2017 and National Electronic Sports Tournament (NEST) Pro 2019.
Tai Yunpan, operation director of Chinese esports platform 5E Play, told The Esports Observer that there are three potential cities that might host the competition: Chengdu, Hainan, and Beijing.
“Beijing is the capital city of China, and we have previous experiences at IEM Beijing-Haidian; Chengdu is the center of Western China, and has plenty of universities. As for Hainan, we considered that the city is warmer than other Chinese cities during the winter.” Yunpan explained. “We still want [a] live audience to attend the event, that’s the reason we put the schedule at [the] end of the year.”
Chinese esports platform 5E Play is well-known in the Chinese CS:GO scene. The company was founded in 2015 and provides a battle platform for CS:GO players, as well as an online community. In November 2019, 5E Play became a partner at ESL’s first stadium-level tournament in China, IEM Beijing-Haidian, providing marketing and media strategies to the company.
