The Halo World Championship 2017 took place over the weekend. It’s Halo’s biggest event of the year, where the top competitive Halo players compete for an impressive prize pool of $1,000,000. However, it seems like the fans themselves didn’t really bother showing up, if we are to believe the stream of photos and tweets coming from the event.

Both the venue and general attendance appear to be so poor, you need to see it to believe it.

When seeing these pictures, fans started cracking so many delightful jokes at the expanse of the ESL and the chosen vanue. Comments like “It could be worse. The mainstage could be shared with Just Dance” and “Even the balloons look like they don’t want to be there” can be found in the discussion following the tweet above.

Further problems arose when Tyler “Ninja” Blevins of team Luminosity, complained about how the staff were fed first and the pro players had to wait.

Some fans who felt the snark and bad press the event was getting was unnecessary, claimed the photos were taken in the overflow tent before or after matches. Greenskull published a few tweets in defense of the Halo World Championship 2017, showing what he calls “non-cherry-picked” photos. These pictures do paint the event in a more positive light, though they are still not very impressive.

However, that wasn’t enough to convince that all is well in Halo’s competitive scene. A tweet comparing the Halo World Championship 2017 with its 2016 counterpart shows a major difference in both attendance and production. Some compared the HWC 2017 with 2016 grand finals of Call of Duty, which took place in the Forum arena. The Forum is known for hosting generations of NBA games, and musical performances by the likes of Prince, Madonna and Led Zeppelin.

https://twitter.com/AaGuy_/status/845692720165392387?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fcompete.kotaku.com%2Fajax%2Finset%2Fiframe%3Fid%3Dtwitter-845692720165392387%26autosize%3D1

But why did this happen? Why would ESL choose such a small venue to begin with? According to fan speculation, the event organizers couldn’t secure the usual venue and had to use the American Campus as a last resort. This of course didn’t fly with fans very well. One fan responded at the time with “EU qualifiers gets Wembley and you’re putting the actual Worlds event in a studio on the west coast.”

However, when we get right down to it, doesn’t matter if a tournament takes place outdoors, indoors, in a tent or in a world-famous stadium. All that matters are the games and the community. If the community isn’t into your event then fans won’t attend, no matter where you set it.


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