FORGE - Your esports industry podcast

Brace yourselves. Two world championships are coming. The International 2023 is around the corner and the Worlds Playin stage already started. This year however, both tournaments feature a slightly different format compared to the years before. We'll talk about the format and do some predictions.

On another solo episode, Jan is diving into esports sponsorships and the two main reasons why we have not seen big sponsorship announcements in the esports industry in a while: restrictions and the economic situation. Some insights into what organizations and brands have to keep in mind when forming a partnership.

After some downtime due to our personal circumstances, Forge is back this week with another episode. Unfortunately Zack is unavailable, but Jan still wanted to talk about the news of the brand new LEC salary cap and recent Valorant Contract Drama surrounding the world championship roster of EG.

Although a week too late, we're spending time this week to talk about the latest Valorant drama involving professional esports team The Guard. What happened, how did Riot solve the issue and the stance on the Tier 2 scene in general gives us a good topic for conversation. All that and more on this week's episode of FORGE.

This week, we recap VCT Champions and talk more about other recent news and results. Zack is back to join the show

Zack is not here this time. Jan is going into recent results of the major ongoing esports competitions and looks into recent news in regards to Counter-Strike and creator owned teams.

In today's episode of FORGE, Zack and Jan talk about the current ongoing tournaments and their predictions who will take it all.

We're back with an episode to focus on counter-strike. Recent news from Valve will impact the business of tournament organizers, teams and players. We'll dive into the news and discuss our reactions to it. Is counter-strike and esports seeing a great reset? All that and more on this week's episode of FORGE.

The LEC is slowing down and reportedly less viewers are watching League of Legends on a weekly basis. Peak viewership for the finals are reduced by more than 50% compared to last year. Is the format to blame? Are new games more interesting for viewers to watch? All that and more on this week's episode of FORGE.

We talked about salary caps last week, but today we expand on the news coming from the LCK about a potential salary cap introduction after the 2023 season. We dive deeper into the pros and cons of the LCK salary cap and talk about the elephant in the room: Overwatch League. Will team owners vote to discontinue in OWL? Why did the league never gain big popularity and was OWL doomed from the start? All that and more, in this week's episode of FORGE.