But you can change that, and it starts by not having a little moan every time that a TO asks you to spend some money.

The end is extremely f-cking nigh

Esports is dying, and it’s your fault.

Seriously, I know that might sound a bit dramatic, and I know it might not be obvious to you, but you don’t have to look very hard in order to see it.

If you pay enough attention, you may have seen phrases like ‘esports winter’ or ‘the bubble has burst’ thrown around. Those phrases aren’t wrong. As someone who is clinging on to survival through it, let me tell you, it’s pretty f-cking chilly.

The fact is that generating money in esports is hard. Like really hard. It doesn’t matter if you’re a team, a TO, or just a humble news outlet, making money in gaming is like trying to hold Mid on Mirage with an MP9. And if you have any issues with gambling or Saudi money, then it becomes borderline impossible.

But even with the apparently bottomless money pit that is the Saudis, money remains a finite resource. Contrary to popular belief, it still doesn’t grow on trees - or in oil deposits - and the repeated rounds of layoffs at ESL or the closure of the Impact circuit should tell you all you need to know about this.

So why am I bringing all of this up? Why, on this (unless you live in the UK) lovely Wednesday morning, am I telling you the death of esports will be blood on your hands?

Because, as much as you might hate to hear this, TOs need your money - and they don’t need your endless complaining.

The ticketing conundrum

That brings us to the IEM Cologne Major 2026. Two key words there: ‘Cologne’ and ‘Major’. Keep that fact in mind.

Twitter was up in arms in the past week because ESL released the ticket prices for the event and they’re pretty expensive - but is that even true? When you consider the fact that Cologne is already the premium Counter-Strike tournament even before you slap the ‘Major’ tag onto it - is the pricing that bad?

Well, I don’t really think so, but let’s first look at the ticket prices as well as the things you get for them.

For the upper seats, you get a nosebleed. Sat at the top of the arena bowl, you’ll have a pretty limited view of the tiny people on the stage and you’ll mostly be staring at the big screens displaying the action. Which sounds kind of crap, I get it, but if you’ve been to any big arena, you’d know that’s pretty standard, regardless of the event, or which seat you’re sat in.

In essence, what you’re actually paying for is the privilege of being in attendance during the tournament and feeling the atmosphere instead of scratching your balls at home. And on the basis I’ve been in that arena for three of the last four Colognes, that’s a privilege I’d happily pay €50 a day for.

Honestly, it’s an absolute steal.

For the lower seats, which for my money are the best seats in the house thanks to the positioning of fan clubs like the Roaring Bears, the Golden Hornets, or Dezorganizada Furiosa. It’s where the roar of the crowd will be at its peak, and again, for €80 a day, it really is a bargain.

But neither of these tickets were the tickets people were moaning about. No, they were moaning at the premium tickets, which come in at a whopping €800, or €200 a day.

Unlike the previous two ticket tiers, this means it comes with some added benefits. You’ll get a goodie bag that retails at €252 containing exclusive merch, and ‘free’ beer or soft drinks at the bars. If you’ve ever been to a Cologne, you’ll know that this is a perk that people enjoy very, very, freely. And if not, lookout for the beer cup snakes the next time the event is on.

It’s to such an extent that I’d be happy to assume most people in those seats are drinking between five and ten pints a day. So, if we go for a middle ground of seven and do a quick search to find out the LANXESS Arena sells beer at €5.90, that comes out at €40 a day, or €160 over the four day event.

That means, once you deduct the value of the goodie bag and the drinks, we’re down to €390. Which basically the same price as the lower seats. Are you getting it yet?

On that basis, I really don’t think it’s that bad. Especially considering that ESL as a tournament organiser, who don’t currently - prepare yourselves, I’m foreshadowing here - have **a way to monetise the multiple millions of viewers at home, need to make a profit as a business.

But, the same could be said about the other TOs who have previously held Majors, so let’s take a look at them, too.

Source: ESL

You get what you pay for

It’s important to remember that IEM is already the premium CS event. Sure, everyone wants to go to a Major, and every player wants to win one, but those same fans can’t imagine not going to a Cologne, and donk’s reaction after winning Cologne says everything you need to know about what that tournament really means.

It’s also important to remember that Germany has a pretty high GDP per capita. Of course, CS tournaments in Central Europe are expected to be international events, but the majority of people attending will still be from the host country - and that has to be represented in ticket prices.

This is a fact that is reflected in the price difference between IEM Cologne and IEM Katowice. In 2025, premium tickets for Cologne were priced at €500. In Katowice, they were €235. Considering the GDP per capita of Germany is almost double that of Poland, this price difference makes sense. Of course, there’s something to be said about the increase in cost between Cologne 25 and 26, but the Goodie Bag this year was worth €100 less, and also: It. Wasn’t. A. Major.

So then, let’s factor in those other Majors. The BLAST.tv Austin Major also had people up in arms about ticket prices, but some of those tickets, as with Cologne came with some sizable perks.

The StarLadder Budapest Major, which is happening in a country with a comparable, but lower GDP per capita to Poland, has its premium tickets coming in at €378. So, again, it’s important to factor in the value of these tickets to domestic attendees before moaning about how you, a travelling attendee, paid less to attend other events.

And, for the sake of context, it doesn’t seem like the premium tickets for the Budapest come with anything close to the benefits of a premium ticket in Cologne, which does increase the value of the ticket. You can argue whether that’s actually worthwhile - I wouldn’t be moved by it - but it’s undoubted that they increase the price

Either way, the fact is that domestic attendees of Cologne do have more spending power. They earn more money and therefore they can also spend more money. If this is the audience that is primarily being catered to, then as shown by the graph below, it’s a relatively wealthy audience that isn’t overly affected by a high ticket price.

Source: numbeo.com

Relax, you’ve still got it pretty good

I know esports prides itself on not being like traditional sports, or ‘sportsball’, or whatever you want to call it to convince yourself it’s different and unique - but the fact is, it just isn’t.

It’s the elite level of a competitive discipline, and when that grows to a certain size, that means it needs substantial sums of money just to stay at that level.

Especially if you don’t want to see reductions in viewership or smaller venues like in COD and HALO.

With the lack of a way to monetise fans watching at home - we’re getting to that bit - that means those attending events will likely have to pay more.

That still doesn’t mean that you loyal Counter-Strike fans have it bad, far from it in fact. If you were into WWE, for example, the lowest price for a two-day pass to WrestleMania 41 was $545 dollars. The highest was $16,496. Sixteen thousand dollars. And that’s probably a conservative estimate. That’s just for your seat, good luck if you want to attend a meet and greet, buy merch or drinks.

Football fans are plagued with the same issues, too. A hospitality ticket at Arsenal - which doesn’t get you as much as it sounds like it should - for a game against Nottingham Forest, a category B game, will set you back £744. When converted, that’s €50 more than a four-day premium ticket in Cologne. Even a regular ticket, for which you get just 90 minutes of entertainment, is £65.

That’s just a regular game, too. For the Champions League final, the pinnacle of club football, fans can expect to pay anywhere between £150 for a regular seat to £4,970 for a hospitality ticket.

At the British Grand Prix, one of the premium races on the F1 calendar, tickets in their new Landostand (give me a break) come in at £535 for three days. For that, you get a reserved seat, a t-shirt, a pin, and access to fanzones where you can expect to spend £100 a day on overpriced and likely sh-t food and drink.

You want to go to the Super Bowl? Expect to pay $3,000 for the cheapest tickets. Courtside seats at Golden State Warriors vs Milwaukee Bucks? $1,500. You get the point.

Going traditional

The fact is that esports grew such a massive amount in the last 20 years. Probably to a level bigger than which players 20 years ago were even dreaming about. Whilst that did once bring in plenty of money, that money has now all but dried up.

That means that esports has to find new ways to make money, and that burden - if you want to call it that - almost always falls upon the fans.

But look, for the most part CS fans have grown up now. They have jobs, income, and they can afford to give a little back for all the countless of hours of free entertainment they’ve gotten over the years.

Of course, many of you won’t like that. A survey in a recent edition of our newsletter saw 72% of readers say they wouldn’t pay to watch. But honestly? Tough.

I know it feels rough to have to start paying for something you used to get for free, but you wouldn’t be the first people to have these thoughts. And arguing against it, acting like - for some reason - esports should be above that is just borderline ungrateful. Sorry if that hurts your feelings.

The truth is simple: paid viewership for esports is coming. Whether you like it or not. I don’t know when, I don’t know how, but it’s an inevitability. Because eventually, the TOs that provide you with this free entertainment will need it to survive.

And look, it won’t even be a bad thing. I know you all look at it like these evil, greedy companies are just trying to steal money from you and get richer, and that might be the case for some traditional sports, but we won’t be seeing that for a while. In the short-term, it will probably only benefit. There’ll be more money going around for everyone. And that means we won’t be forced to see the closure of women’s circuits, or iconic organisations back out of the esport due to ‘lack of sustainability’.

So how do TOs monetise the fans who are watching at home? Well, there’s a good option and a bad option.

The bad option is a pay-per-view model. This would likely become ridiculously expensive for fans, especially given the number of TOs and events within the calendar.

The best option, then, is to use a subscription model. Where viewers would pay a fee per season or per year that would allow them to watch all content put out by a TO in that year, and where higher tiers of that subscription could see them go ad free or have extra content available.

That sort of system has done great things for a sport like football. The Premier League just doesn’t become the best league in the world without it, and that’s down to the money generated by it and the effect that has had on the Premier League teams.

As long as, just like in football, there is some form of revenue share with the teams that take part in the events, the same will become true for esports, too.

So how do we safely introduce this to Counter-Strike? Well, ain’t that the million dollar question?

Good thing I have the answer then, isn’t it?

Source: ChatGPT

How to save esports (or CS, at least)

It all starts with the Majors. The biggest events in the Counter-Strike calendar.

The two Majors would remain free to watch. Serving as advertising for the remainder of the circuit, the higher viewership of Majors already brings in sponsors who pay a premium to advertise their products during the events to help offset the cost, and more importantly, it can give the viewers the itch to watch more glorious Counter-Strike.

Each TO would then have their own subscription model, where viewers would pay season-to-season or yearly to watch the events they put on.

It wouldn’t be a big sub, let’s say $15 for a season of ESL action, but that would grant the viewer access to all the big events ESL put on, as well as the smaller tier two events they host.

Of course, that could lead to TOs such as BLAST and PGL becoming overshadowed by not having a Cologne or a Krakow to really sell the sub cost with, but that can easily be combated. All it takes is either by having a lower cost to begin with, or by trying to build the same level of prestige to one or two of their events per year. All you really need to do for that is return to the same, good location a number of times and use a good format, because that’s how narratives form.

It’ll be a difficult transition for a lot of fans, of course it will. Viewership may dip in the short-term, too, but a smaller number of viewers who are actually financially contributing are worth a lot more than a higher number that contribute nothing. And, thanks to the Major as an advertising tool, many of those viewers will return.

The fact is, this change is inevitable. It has to be. Otherwise, this current ‘esports winter’ will only seem mild compared to the one that is bound to come.

We can avoid that, though. We can make the idea of the ‘esports winter’ seem like a distant memory. But the onus for that ultimately falls on us. The fans. The people enjoying the free entertainment. If we are open to the change that probably should have been made years ago, we can make esports thrive.

It wouldn’t even be much; likely far less than you already pay for other subscription services. A feasible amount to pay for something that is otherwise unrealistic to expect to get for nothing. A feasible amount to support something you love.

My question is this - why wouldn’t you want that?

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