Azubu's Kevin Kwon and CSL's Duran Parsi on Azubu's purchase of CSL eSports Central

Hello, my name is Kevin Kwon and I am the Global eSports Manager also in charge of Global Marketing Communication at the Korean branch of Azubu, a professional Game Media Company headquartered in Berlin, Germany that specializes in game knowledge, walk-thrus, and tips for all gamers across all platforms. We also are a Social Networking Service provider.

Well as most of hardcore League of Legends fans will know, we sponsored the biggest League of Legends competition in Korea this season for the OGN called The Champions. While that was for the top professional players in the game, we also wanted to reach out to give the amateur and up and coming players a chance to compete in an exciting environment as well. That environment, we are hoping, is this new partnership with CSL. When people consider top eSports competitions and eSports going mainstream all over the world, they are really only considering the top professional players, not the amateurs or the aspiring gamers. To get eSports to the mainstream properly, we consider both.

I could say we are watering the plant to grow, meaning we are showing the path and some options for university students to become professional gamers rather than the usual paths to traditional jobs and careers. We want to make eSports and professional gaming a viable career path as well, and aiming towards university students with initiatives like this is the start to doing that. We want to open the door for these students and the newer generations of gamers to be able to realistically aspire to be professional gamers, and this is step one.

Well we were initially in talks with Duran Parsi from there because he was looking for a sponsor for his team. However, I guess after they realized the real opportunity here those talks quickly changed direction into one of this partnership. Afterwards, one of our team members from Azubu met with Duran at E3 and we started discussing this back and forth. And, after discussing a few points with him, I met him in Seattle during PAX Prime to move this forward.

Well the first thing is we are planning to host the biggest collegiate event in the history of eSports. As we announced earlier, it will not only have the biggest prize pool of any collegiate eSports event with $182,000 split evenly between StarCraft 2 and League of Legends, but this competition will be global! It will include students from all over the world in regions like the European West and Asia on top of North America. Plus, we plan on hosting this twice a year.

Once all the documents are ready, we are going to make CSL a part of Azubu and we will call it the Azubu Collegiate League. Azubu's aim with this is to create a Global e-Sports Collegiate Association. So once we start the college league anyone or any team from universities and colleges around the world will be able to register with us in order to participate in the league.

The Global e-Sports Collegiate Association will also be broken up into branches per region as well. So, Korea for example will be the Korean e-Sports Collegiate Association, etc. Our goal for this collegiate initiative is obviously very long term and structured.

At Azubu, we always had plans to open up branches all over the world. Right now for example we have our headquarters in Berlin to cover Europe, and a branch in Korea to cover Asia. We've always wanted specifically to open up a North American branch, and this is us finally doing that. We aim to have a branch in Los Angeles to cover North America.

Right now specifically for CSL we're still very busy organizing everything for them to merge under us. Azubu will then have a department called the Azubu Collegiate League and we will have Duran be the Head Director of this department. There will be no change, CSL will continue to do what they've obviously been good at, planning and hosting collegiate leagues.

From there, as I mentioned before we will establish The Global e-Sports Collegiate Association and all the different continents will fall under it.

We are trying to make the biggest collegiate competition eSports has ever seen, starting with the $182,000 prize pool for both games. Our hope is to get all of the media behind this with big names reporting on it. We feel as though it should be easier for the mainstream to get behind the league, if we are not just focused on the top professional players, but the university students as well.

Right now eSports is just focused on that top level of gamers, that elite group that is hard to break into. As we aim at the university students and give them opportunities to realistically aspire to become professional gamers, this elite group doesn't seem that hard to get into any more. By opening eSports up to more than just the elite group of top professional gamers, the hope is that the mainstream gets behind this that much more, and eSports continues to make that big push into the open with this next step.

Gaming, and subsequently eSports, still has this perception looming over it that it is bad for you, that focusing your time playing video games instead of doing anything else is just bad. We all know that's not completely true because of the top professional gamers. However, by hosting this kind of big event we are also trying to show that gaming is not really bad but it can bring good things. Again, those good things in the past have really been targeted towards that elite group of top professional gamers. This collegiate step brings this closer to the homes of the general public.

My name is Duran Parsi and I'm 24 years old, I've been involved in gaming for most of my life, starting with Starcraft 1 at the game's release in 1997. I've been heading the CSL for about 3 years now and this past year we've grown from just doing Starcraft 2 to having League of Legends as well. With this new partnership, I'm very excited for the future

Well, Azubu wants to change the face off Collegiate eSports for the better, and the fact that we were the first ones in the space, and the most experienced, it was a natural fit. Our long term goals are the same: to see collegiate esports grow to rival that of collegiate sports here in the states - but to do it globally. We want to show that education and gaming can go hand in hand, and that a career in and passion for gaming can actually help students with their education.

The CSL staff and I will be working directly with and for Azubu on this venture, and outside of having the resources to do all the things we want and more, nothing will change really -- the spirit of the CSL will continue on and keep growing, and that's the beautiful thing.

We're anticipating many more years of these events to come and will do our best to pave the way for more mainstream recognition!

Well, I've actually been speaking to Azubu since MLG Columbus back in April(?)... but it was mostly because they expressed interest in sponsoring my Starcraft 2 team, LighT eSports. I discovered that they hosted one of the biggest international LoL leagues in the world (OGNLoL), so I said "hey I've got a collegiate league, maybe you'd be interested in a sponsorship."

After giving them our proposal and having an initial conversation with them, they said "we want to do this, but we want it to be the biggest event in history." We met at PAX to talk more about it and see how we could work together to make it happen. I think we will be able to do it :)

It's been on ongoing discussion really for at least the past month, and is continuing every day.

Well the biggest goal as I mentioned before is bridging the gap between a "niche" sport and something more mainstream. To be honest, I think collegiate eSports is MUCH better than pro gaming to be the first to accomplish this. I know ESPN was at one of the MLG's last year, but none of their interviews or coverage actually made it to the public. Our goal is that for this event, that mainstream coverage will actually make it past the editor's desk.

Because America places such a premium on college sports (NCAA, etc), this is the perfect way to show the spirit of competition and dispel the stereotype that gamers are social rejects/dropouts. We have students at Berkeley, Yale, Harvard, etc, that are competing at a high level. This I believe, will be attractive to a broader audience.

We will of course be hosting a live Grand Final event, bringing the top 4 SC2 and top 4 LoL teams to play in front of thousands of fans. It will be the first of many. Besides this, we are also planning a large charity event that will hopefully raise a lot of money for cancer research/treatment in children and young adults. We've also got a lot of other big ideas that we'll be executing in the future.

I can say that the live Grand Final will be a two day event that will feature a lot more than just great gaming action. Our hope is to create a festival similar to what Dreamhack has done in Europe, but with a collegiate spin. You'll find out more about it later ;)

My personal expectation is to exceed Azubu's expectations! I also want this to be the biggest event ever and am going to put 100% of my effort into making that happen. I really want to see someone like CNN or the NY Times cover the event. I think recently there has been a growing interest in gaming and if we can show that: a) there are very successful students that are also able to juggle successful gaming careers, and b) students can earn tuition scholarships and big prize purses just by pursing a hobby while still being in school, they will want to cover that.

eSports, I believe, is the wave of the future. Since college students ARE the future - many of tomorrow's leaders are gamers today. Furthermore, I really hope that this collaboration will give a lot back to the community that has done so much for me personally. Nothing would make me happier than to know college students have a shot at earning a piece of $182,000.

When I won CSL when I was in undergrad with my team, UCSD... I got nothing but a pat on the back :P! Azubu has the same goals and the same visions that we do at the CSL, and so working with them will just make these dreams become a reality much sooner than we would be able to achieve on our own, so for that I am very grateful.

First and foremost I want to thank everyone at the CSL, new and old for being with us and volunteering their time to help be a part of something special. I'm super excited for everyone because I think we can make history here and I'm happy to have so many great friends who are going to be along on the journey, and I appreciate all the work the team does.

I also want to thank Azubu, their plan to grow eSports is great and I'm so happy to be a part of it. I'm looking forward to seeing this plan grow and evolve and do great things. I think this is a great opportunity and I'm glad that they are going to be supporting our vision to the fullest.

Thanks to any fans I have as well (if I have any), I really appreciate all the support I get from people and hope that my work will make people's lives better (I.e. giving them more tournaments/events to play)! Lastly, I want to thank my dad for giving me a lot of guidance and advice.