ASUS ROG Winter 2014 Fri 31 January – Sat 1st February 2014 Assembly Winter 2014 Helsinki Exhibition and Convention Centre Helsinki, Finland

Assembly Winter nd largest LAN event in Finland, topped only by Assebmly Summer. This winter held in Helsinki Exhibition and Convention Centre computer places, all sold out.

Tournament Area The group stages were played in a dedicated ASUS ROG tournament area clearly separated from the LAN area. The area consisted of 32 individual PC’s, one for each player, which they had access to throughout the event. Personal, and powerful, computers for all players is a rare but highly appreciated luxury. The ASUS ROG brand and products were on display in every side of the tournament area as well as on the large sheet at the back.

Players Lounge Like in the summer event, Assembly hosted a Players Lounge area for all tournament players next to the tournament area. The lounge provided drinks & snacks and a place to relax and enjoy the on-going matches on multiple screens. The area was hosted by the Finnish eSports Federation in association with Assembly.

ASUS ROG Arena ASUS ROG Arena was the best place to view the tournament with a big screen, live casting and the dueling players in sight. The arena with 140 seats was set up right in the center of the LAN hall. The stage was utilized on both tournament days, and a total of 13 matches were played there, including group stage and playoff matches.

Casters & Broadcast The main broadcast was covered at the tournament area stage by the veteran caster, Thomas ”Khaldor” Kilian, and by the professional gamer/caster, Manuel ”Grubby” Schenkhuizen. Winner interviews were done after each game by Dennis ”TaKe” Gehlen.

Tournament Winner San Kang Cho Wong Age: 23 Country:South Koreaa Team: yoe Flash Wolves San returned to the ASUS ROG tournament this winter only to claim the first place which was denied from him by Taeja last summer. Source: wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/San

Casters Khaldor Thomas Kilian Age: 32 Country:Germany Living in South Korea, Khaldor is currently employed by GOMTV as a full-time commentator for the English broadcast of both the GSTL and the Code A portion of the GSL. In his free time, he remains dedicated to casting smaller regional cups and tournaments English-speaking audiences from his apartment in Korea. He also produces a various range of content for all eSports fans out there one being his Youtube content mainly involving the StarCraft 2 scene in South Korea.

Casters Grubby Manuel Schenkhuizen Age: 27 Country:Netherlands Grubby is most known for his professional career amongst Warcraft III from which he transitioned into StarCraft II as the game was dropping in favor of the public. He is one of the most known and most successful real-time strategy players in Europe and has a long gaming history behind him. Due to this and a large fan-base he has not joined any team while he has competed in StarCraft II, but rather advertised his own brand, Team Grubby. Grubby is also known for his relationship with his wife, Cassandra, for asking her hand in marriage on-stage at the BlizzCon 2009 event award ceremony. She currently works as Manuel’s manager and supports him in his career as a professional gamer.

Host TaKe Dennis Gehlen Age: 27 Country:Germany TaKe is a German e-sports figure best known for hosting the HomeStory Cup and Acer TeamStory Cup StarCraft II tournaments. He works in many roles in e-sports in Germany and abroad, mainly in tournament management, hosting, interviewing, broadcasting and shoutcasting. TaKe is well know to most of the players as he has been in numerous events with them. On top of that he has a true passion for e-sports which makes him an excellent interviewer and host for e-sports events.

Media Since the summer tournament ASUS ROG has taken advantage of the social media with an active Twitter account. twitter.com/rogtournament During the event 45 tweets were written. The tournament website created in summer was utilized once again. This site hosted the material for all community streams, game replays and provided real time news and content of the tournament for the community. All information about the tournament was available there. The website was used as the first source of information for the audiences, and it received unique visitor. All of the news releases were also published on the most prominent StarCraft website TeamLiquid.net views and 500 comments on news articles views and over 4000 comments on two live report topics A sticky message about ASUS ROG Winter for five days on the header of reddit.com/r/starcraft, the 2 nd biggest StarCraft community.

Statistics Main stream - twitch.tv/rogtournament Concurrent viewers: Total views: Unique views: Minutes watched: Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle) broadcasted the main stream live on their website (stats unavailable). Community streams The tournament had 14 community streams broadcasting the event in English, French, German, Russian, Polish, Spanish and Chinese. Concurrent viewers total: Unique views total:

Breakdown of video views of top 10 countries