Fragadelphia Co-Founder: "I think we're still gonna be right back where we were shortly"

In part two of Dust2.us' extended interview with Fragadelphia co-founder, Stephen "sasquatcH" Csikos, Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore had a chance to pick Csikos' brain about what the future could hold for Fragadelphia in 2023. For better or worse, Nerd Street provided a massive amount of support for Fragadelphia, helping propel it to the series newer fans know today, leaving many worried about its future.

However, with Csikos being at the helm of an independent project once again, he told Dust2.us about his philosophy for the brand and what he values in a tournament series as storied as Fragadelphia.

Now that Fragadelphia is decoupled from Nerd Street, does that rule out any potential usage of their facilities, future partnerships, or future cooperation, or is that still on the table?

Yeah, I think there is potential. There is a chance for us to still work with Nerd Street. We're definitely interested in still potentially doing events, even if it's not with Nerd Street. Like I said earlier, my intention at first was to sell the Fragadelphia brand to Nerd Street and be their property, so there's really no ill will. After not doing the sale, the non-exclusivity is because originally I thought it was going to be their brand. Obviously, if you are selling something to somebody, you probably aren't going out and trying to work with one of their potential competitors. But now that the potential chance to have an open dialogue with everybody in the community to see what is out there. I think we are super interested in seeing what's available on top of Nerd Street.

What does the future hold for Fragadelphia as you look for backing, and where are you looking for support and sponsorships?

Right now we are talking to a lot of different entities, traditional sponsors, partnerships, online partners, platforms. We really think that one of the ethos of our event series was to get into people's locales. We don't want to have people travel so far, so we've been looking at multiple venues in different regions of the US. I think that's key to us. We have potential partners that are looking to build stuff, looking to be rentals, and some are looking to just give venues. Based on their asks and their needs and how they align with ours, we will be making decisions around that.

Obviously, not gonna turn down free venues. If somebody is willing to help us out if somebody wants to get involved, we're willing to listen to anybody and everybody. I think that's been kind of what we've done since the beginning. I think we've always been good community members, we worked with different entities like Mustache Masters, or anybody else who's always asked for any form of help or assistance. We can always provide. We'll do it right, and that's kind of how we've operated. It is really hard to say what our future plans are other than we'll be doing events. I don't know the scale or size yet, I just know that we'll be out there shortly doing some stuff.

In terms of your vision for Fragadelphia, are you aiming more for the return to the traditional Fragadelphia where there are two standalone events per year, or are you more in favor of the circuit we saw under Nerd Street?

I think they have different values. "Circuitizing" Fragadelphia allows you to build up a larger prize pool in the end and drive teams towards that. It potentially brings different revenue streams and more solid revenue streams which is really good for certain entities. For us, if we're not a company trying to make money, I would say that it is an interest of us to potentially go back one-offs instead of a circuit. We're OK with either direction because it is not really our goal to like elongate stuff.

I also really miss the old big open style tournaments that we were known for. I really enjoy seeing who can come in and upset people, just properly seeding it and letting it go out, just rip from the beginning instead of that tiered approach. Granted, we saw some upsets of the top tier people coming to FRAG 17 and even 16, but you never see that round one potential upset that you get when it is an open tournament. That is a staple I would say of what we started and like what we really want to be about.

Talking about those upsets, a big part of the narrative of these last two Fragadelphia events has been the upsets by NA teams beating international teams. Is it a goal of this new Fragadelphia to target international teams, and how do you intend to bring them in?

Yeah, we want to still bridge the ocean. I think that is something that was really unique and cool over the last couple of events that you had those European entities show up and obviously see how they do against some American competition. That's always been the running question when you're playing, how is our scene compared to theirs? How do our tier two teams line up with their tier two teams. You never really find that out because most of those teams don't face each other. If formats have one team qualifying from a region or two, you will never see how the semi-professional or low-tier professionals compete against each other and that's super interesting to me and I think to a lot of others too.

It opens up potential or sponsors more too because it's a unique spin on the event. It's not the same cookie-cutter tier one event that qualifies online, or qualifies and goes to a large LAN and the same 16 teams show up. So for us, that's still a key, and I think we're looking at ways to work with entities that are like ours in other regions. I think there are ways to run events to where some winners of other events get travel stipends or get assistance and can qualify for something like that. That's a big goal of ours in the future, and I think as we go forward something we're going to explore.

Were you pleasantly surprised by the turnout of the bigger international teams at Fragadelphia 17? Seeing Major winners and top pros like shox, kuben, and STYKO must have been very exciting from your perspective.

Yeah, I think that's unique, right? When I was still playing in 2010 my Counter-Strike: Source team went to Europe and played in a big open event called DSRack LAN #3 and all the big names in Source attend it. It was really fun to go to events like that, where you see those players and it just brings that Olympics feel to an event. I think open events are really unique for that, like the old CPL's and I really am very surprised and happy that teams like Apeks sent their team out. It's always going to be a question of where the support for those events comes from, and where the monetization comes when nobody will support those events, not even the teams, right?

So having those teams participate and really support what we're doing is really cool and I think for the future we'd love to have more international teams, not only European. I'd love to see more Brazilians come. I think it's really cool that we are one of the countries a lot of top-end Brazilian teams flock to to participate in our domestic leagues before they become international teams. There are a lot of Brazilians that could easily make that trip. São Paulo to Philadelphia is a really convenient flight and maybe if we can head up the Southeast, maybe São Paulo to Miami would also be an attainable flight for some of those players.

In terms of attracting these international players, who would you must gush over to have come to a Fragadelphia event?

I don't think that some of these players that I'd love to see still play. When I was still playing Counter-Strike: Source there was a player who was by far better than any competitors and he played for a Czech/Slovak team; GuardiaN, who went on to play for NAVI. I would love to see a Slovakian or Czech team show up to a Fragadelphia event. We haven't had an Eastern European team show up, and I think there's a huge interest in that region of teams that are not internationally known or good enough potentially to qualify for some of the ESL Faceit Group events that would be able to compete in a Fragadelphia. They do some really big things over there, like the Budapest V4 esports tournament, and all these different things that are a pretty large size, but we never see them outside of that region. I would love to see some of those teams make their way here.

So players like .PhP?

Oh my god, those players all quit right? All those guys who played for Reason at the end of the Source era were super dominant in Europe, and I really think that it'd be interesting to see them play. But really not so much them, just people from those regions. I really think that they are a very unique region, with so many teams in those tournaments. I used to watch HLTV scorebots from those events and see literally hundreds of teams show up. That's what I feel sometimes the Americas is similar to.

After 17 Fragadelphia events, can you tell us how the post-COVID and post-VALORANT Fragadelphia events differ from the earlier FRAG events when you were getting started?

If you just look at it at face value, the community is very different now. The age is a lot younger than it used to be. There's a lot more of a cultural difference, especially when you get younger and younger. The expectations of the community are a little different too. Just in general, they've seen Fragadelphia growing up, they've expected it to be a certain way, and I think that's one thing we noticed when we first came back from the pandemic.

We ran the small 16-team events in the LAN center over two days, and it's a LAN center with like 20 computers right, that is akin to us doing "Fragadelphia .5's" because they're in-between large tournaments, but they were supposed to be for Philadelphia locals. We didn't have a stream up, because the venue during COVID was locked down with just the teams that were playing. People got mad that there was no stream up there, and culturally people have higher expectations than what we have as internal staff. We're trying to appease some of those expectations now with the brand, but it's really hard when you think about it to produce smaller-tier tournaments that get a couple hundred views concurrently and then have budgets that are the same price as a full production day.

It's something you have to really balance. Esports is more mature [now], people are less interested in doing things as a community and they're more interested in getting compensated for their work upfront. I don't think that's a bad thing, I just think it prohibits entities that are on the rise; the barrier to entry is a lot higher now.

I think if we didn't have a history of 8+ years, almost 9 in March, of an event, it'd be hard for us to sometimes reach out for help. People are willing to help us, while others I think don't get the help we get. That's maybe the double-edged sword there. You build a brand that people see, to have value, but their expectations then go higher than you even expected, that you know financially can't work, but you have to drive to that. I think as we get back to what we were, not being a part of Nerd Street as an entity, not being Nerd Street's tournament, we're going to have to look at what we're looking to build here with the community as a partner. I really do think that it's a two-way street; any league, tournament, or series, is not owned by one person.

Even though technically on paper I own Fragadelphia, it can't be that way or it will never succeed. I really want to involve a lot of people, I want to involve a lot of the community. I want to find the next Scrawny, the next broadcaster, to give them a chance to get in front of the mic and see them succeed because that to me is the reason why we did this, more than just a way to make money.

How do you feel about the future of Fragadelphia heading into 2023?

I think I feel good that there is a path forward for what we've started. I think there is a very high chance we have a small hiccup, a small resetting of expectations internally and externally, but I think we're still gonna be right back where we were shortly. That feels good, makes you feel good.

Csikos and Fragadelphia have yet to announce their plans for 2023, however, hopefully NA players and fans won't have to wait long for the much-loved event to return for 2023.