IESF announce trimmed down talent list for 2024 WEC
Yesterday IESF announced the talent list for IESF 2024, seeing a fairly small talent pool of two casters each for the $240,000 mixed tournament and the $160,000 female tournament. For the mixed tournament, the action will be brought to life by a duo of Anirudh "Paladin" Ajay and Neo "Ne0kai" Caine, while the female tournament will see Lucy "LucyLuce" Eastwood and Brandon "BDog" Rawlings on the microphones.
Dust2.us understands from sources that as a consequence of the main event only having a single casting duo, a number of group stage matches will not have commentary. For context, this was also the case at IESF 2023 in Iași, Romania, however that event also featured James Banks as a host of both the mixed and female tournaments.
The decision to proceed with a smaller talent pool has the potential to raise eyebrows especially as IESF 2024 is being held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia amidst recent investment and entanglements in the TO by the Saudi Arabian state and royal family. Last year IESF named Saudi prince Faisal bin Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud as their new president while also discussing plans for IESF to move their headquarters from South Korea to Saudi Arabia.
However, when the event is viewed through the lens of reportedly almost being canceled by Saudi Prince Faisal and the recent announcement by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) of their plans to cut back on non-domestic investments, it perhaps suggests IESF 2024 is not a huge priority to direct further spending into, especially as the Saudi Esports World Cup is a direct competitor to IESF.
It is also worth noting that Saudi Arabia elected to not field a roster for IESF 2024 while the qualifiers for the event were plagued with issues including the cancellation of the Brazilian Pan Esports Games qualifier and the Chinese Asian Esports Championship qualifier, resulting in the event losing its two offline qualifiers.
Regardless of the small talent pool, the quartet of casters will undoubtedly do their best to bring the international action to life when the IESF Female World Esports Championship 2024 starts on November 11th and the mixed event starts on November 13th.
