When the average gamer in the Middle East thinks of eSports, they visualise The International and The World Championship, they picture gaming legends such as Cloud9 and Fnatic, they think of Starcraft 2 and Counter Strike: Global Offensive. While eSports has taken leaps and bounds to be recognised as an actual sport in countries across the globe, the eSports scene in the Middle East has still been sadly overlooked and often missed. Cyber Sports League plans to change that.
The brainchild of Karim Mousa and Nassim Ghaith, Cyber Sports League is relatively new to the local eSports scene but the company makes up for it by staying true to their audience and gaming roots; it’s an organisation for gamers, by gamers and while that saying may be stepping into Razer’s territory, it’s true. Karim and Nassim both grew up in Abu Dhabi and joke about being born with controllers in their hands, such is their passion for gaming. They grew up following eSports leagues around the world such as the Major League Gaming (MLG) and the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) however they noticed and despaired at the fact that the the UAE and Middle East didn’t have a similar platform. Competitive gaming at the time was restricted to dingy cafes and LAN tournaments at a friends house. After graduating from university the two decided to sit down and formulate what is today, the Cyber Sports League.
It wasn’t a smooth ride however, difficulties led to their website launching after a year in development as opposed to a few months and an attempt to host a League of Legends tournament fell through after the realisation that players were not registered in the same region as the server was. However rather than hinder them these hiccups empowered them; the Cyber Sports League website went online in August 2015, they hosted their first LAN tournament of Counter Strike: Global Offensive in October and they refunded all those affected by the League of Legends tournament all while gathering a large base of fans and participants.
Furthermore, rather than throwing in a bunch of teams to fight against each other, they instead opted to be more professional and have a crew of casters who commentate on matches and games, offering their expert advice on gameplays, tips & tricks to turn a game around and in general are well versed with the current Meta to the pleasure of the audience that follows the tournaments via their Twitch page which was recently verified making CSL official partners of Twitch.
Karim and Nassim don’t plan to just stop at CS:GO and DOTA 2 however, they plan to expand their league to contain not just PC games but consoles too and of course the modern duoply of competitive console gaming that is FIFA and Call of Duty. The train doesn’t stop there though, so long as there is a considerable interest in a game and there are people who wish to participate in matches, CSL will cater to their needs and organise tournaments for those games. Games such as StarCraft 2 and OverWatch are natural contenders, especially the latter due to the growing buzz and the iconic tag of being a Blizzard game. But tournaments aren’t all they’re interested in hosting; while the majority of their tournaments are online (teams from across the Middle East compete in them, making a physical tournament hard to host) Karim and Nassim are also enthusiastic about hosting gaming meetups in an effort to see nurture and meet with the local gaming community.
But tournaments are still their main focus with one just around the corner.
CSL has an upcoming tournament this weekend, the CSL DOTA 2 Winter Open, a tournament that will expect to see 16 teams from across the Middle East fight to have a chance of winning the AED 5000 prize pool over the 4th and 5th of March. The winning team will also get five SoundBlaster X H3 Headsets in addition to their cash prize. The tournament itself will follow a best-of-one, double elimination format. While the best-of-one feature isn’t seen favourable in the gaming scene, it’s utilised here due to time constraints, however Karim and Nassim hope the addition of the double elimination format and a loser bracket will give everyone a fair chance. The reigning champions E-LAB (from Lebanon) as well as the runner up Bendover (from Egypt) will be returning to the event in the hopes of garnering another win and more fame.
However the CSL DOTA 2 Winter Open is just one tournament on the road to making the UAE and the Middle East a nexus of eSports gaming, a future Karim and Nassim aspire to bring about and be a part off with the Cyber Sports League.
You can sign up for CSL tournaments here and view tournaments live here.
This article was adapted and formatted from an interview.
