South Asian esports tournament organiser Skyesports has announced the latest addition to Skyesports Masters for 2024, with a major format change.
The event will no longer be a franchised league for Indian organisations, but rather a seven day LAN event than will feature seven invited teams and one Indian team.
Skyesports Masters 2024 will be held from April 8th-14th. The location of the event has yet to be announced, but it is confirmed that it will be held on LAN.
Out of the eight teams that will be in attendance, six will be directly invited whilst two, one Indian and one European, will fight for respective spots through qualifiers.
The roadmap that Skyesports released at the end of last year had the event scheduled to be hosted in Mumbai, but this recent announcement has yet to unveil a location.
Skyesports announced its plans to launch a franchised Counter-Strike league in April 2023. However, in August 2023 Valve announced rule changes that will effectively ban franchised leagues in the esport, set to come into force in 2025.
Another change is that the prize pool has risen from $245,000 (~£193,000) to $350,000 (~£276,000), likely in attempt to attract better known European teams to compete in the tournament. However, many top tier one teams will be in attendance at IEM China, as the events runs on the same dates.
The change in format means that the tournament will likely get more recognition outside of South East Asia as European and other international rosters will be invited to compete, meaning the fans of those teams will be watching the Skyesports stream. On the other hand there will be less Indian players and organisations competing.
Nonetheless, Skyesports Masters 2024 will be the biggest Counter-Strike tournament to ever be hosted in India and is in line with Skyesports’ aim to grow esports in the region.
Skyesports has been a driving force in South Asian esports since 2018 and has established a name for itself across an array of esports titles. The most successful are its Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) tournaments such as the Skyesports League, the Skyesports Grand Slam, and the Skyesports championship.
