EFG's Schulze comments on Sydney's opening round MR12 BO1s

Fan and player feedback to IEM Sydney 2023 has been profound since the change in Counter-Strike 2 matches going from MR15 to MR12. While this has resulted in shorter matches in terms of time, some fans are concerned that using a best-of-one matchup increases the chances for randomness. For IEM Sydney, changing from a BO1 structure to a BO3 structure with MR12 was simply not an option at this time, according to Ulrich Schulze, SVP of Game Ecosystems of ESL FACEIT (EFG).

In response to the question of moving from BO1s to BO3s for IEM Sydney, Schulze explained that the change to MR12 is just a few weeks old since Counter-Strike 2 was formally released on September 27th. With planning for Sydney happening months ago, changing from BO1s to BO3s would have had a "significant logistical impact" with potentially even additional days of competition which was not considered feasible.

With that in mind, EFG will be monitoring the impact of MR12 and to see if that will allow the organizer to replace more of the BO1s with BO3s where and when applicable. Only five days of IEM competition featured BO1s while 36 days used BO3s, according to Shulze. It is important to note that Syndey, like IEM Dallas, uses BO1s in the opening round with BO3s following for qualification or elimination matches.

Finally, in examining the efficiency of BO1s compared to BO3s, Schulze acknowledges that there is a tradeoff between the format used and the number of teams that can participate. Right now, EFG is trying to "balance those two sides" as they work through figuring out the optimal event format in Counter-Strike 2.