The trials of keeping time in eSports schedules © Shutterstock/Jon Partridge

Keeping any tournament running is no easy feat. Teams need to be on time, the tech crew need to have everything functioning and the production cast have to keep everything flowing smoothly. If just one cog falls out of the machine, delays happen, and sometimes there's nothing anyone can do to stop it, especially when those involved are on different continents, as is frequently the case with online events.

Running behind is now such a common occurrence in eSports that stream spectators have spawned various memes and jokes to spam in chat whenever something goes wrong. But behind the scenes there's a series of failsafes and back-up plans for most situations. We talked to those in the know to find out how to keep the machine rolling.

"When you are counting on a stable internet connection at 11 or 12 locations rather than one, things are bound to happen," Mike 'Hawkeye' Chapman tells RedBull.com . Chapman is the current community manager at streaming service Hitbox , one of the premier broadcasters for eSports in the Western scene.

"Online you have issues with people logging into the game, teams joining a lobby on time, real life getting in the way – like a player stuck in traffic, or they got off work late – and general internet connection issues."

An SC2 player at ESL’s Meisterschaft tournament © Helene Kristiansson/ESL

These sorts of problems are almost unique to eSports, especially the portion of competitions played out online rather than at a LAN. After all, football teams have to be in the changing room beforehand, and only bad traffic can stop that, not a crumbly ISP. During last week's The International 5 qualifiers, Arif 'MSS' Anwar was late to join his decisive match with team North American Rejects, fighting for their spot in the biggest Dota tournament of the year. Unfortunately for him and his team, Time Warner's internet service had gone out for the entire city of New York – a metropolitan area of 8.5 million people. Finding a new place to play was taking a while.

"We have had it happen to us occasionally that games got delayed, mainly due to other teams not showing up in proper time," says Job 'CaptCoach' Hilbers, coach of Titan's Smite team. "I often tell the guys to just stay ready, theorycraft our draft a bit more, get everything they need such as coffee, a bite to eat, going to the toilet."

The impact of delays on teams can be devastating. Success in eSports relies, as in most traditional sports, on a combination of training to improve skill, and focus to attain a state known as 'flow'. When players enter flow, they are completely immersed in what they have to do, resulting in improved performance. To do this, players need to shut out extraneous thoughts – a task made far more difficult when you have to wait and sustain a cleared mind for minutes at a time.

"The only thing that really gets affected by elongated wait times is their focus, so I try to keep them occupied with minor tasks," CaptCoach says. "Obviously this deteriorates focus, but to compensate for that I hold a minor briefing of what it is we need to really focus on in order to win our games, plus I usually give a minor speech prior to our games starting. After which [the team's other coach] Omgimabird usually does a last minute strat talk, and that's how we prep our guys to get back into the right mindset."

Essentially, anything to prevent players from over-thinking their role in the coming match is the only defence teams have against delays. But prevention is often the best form of defence, and Chapman knows plenty about correct procedure. Having worked as head admin on NESL's League of Legends tournaments, and as eSports Manager at Curse Voice, he's seen the problem from multiple angles.

The audience awaits an Evolve Pro/Am tournament © Chris Bahn/ESL

"For organisers, communication is the key thing to preventing delays," he says. "Make sure every team captain and manager has a direct contact with an admin either online or at the live event. They should know exactly who they are to talk to if they have any issues. Those admins should have direct contact with tech and production staff to solve issues and to keep casters informed. Sometimes long delays are caused by simple problems, but it takes time to get the person who can fix it informed, and in the right place."

The role admins take in the process is understated, and unseen, by the vast majority of the audience. Occasionally an admin will be seen to type in all-chat during a game pause, checking the rulesets of the current tournament and advising players about what they can and can't allow. But for CaptCoach, this job is imperative, and needs to be carried out better.

"I am unsure how strict they are with following up on these rules, but during the first week of Wildcards for EU Regionals, SK Gaming [now Fnatic] didn't turn up for at least 40 minutes and didn't get disqualified," Job says. "We felt that the rules needed to be enforced, but they never were. I believe Hi-Rez has become stricter in terms of enforcing rules, due to the game and the professional scene becoming, well more professional. I think that, that was a necessary change."

It's a common complaint across the board even outside of Hi-Rez's self-organised tournaments, though. And with smaller teams, good admins are harder to come by. But while admins are working out the extent of their powers and tech crews are scrambling to reconnect loose wires, there are still thousands of viewers sat in the lurch.

"Our recommendations to broadcasters would be to have filler content prepared," says Mike Chapman. "At LAN events interviews, and caster/analyst desk content can be great for filling delay time. Making sure your casters and analysts have a good rapport and can be entertaining on their own if needed to fill time. This is where the really talented casters can distinguish themselves."

It's an important aspect to get right, as the existence of many big tournaments relies on their support from sponsors. And support from sponsors relies on many happy eyeballs. Too long between games and audiences start to drop off, but too much sponsor-supported filler content and you risk alienating an audience or fostering anti-commercial sentiment – that in turn makes the sponsor less likely to fund the next one. Being late, in other words, isn't just unfortunate or unprofessional – it can be financially damaging.

Outside of a LAN environment, Hitbox also tries to provide broadcasters with the means to keep their audience entertained without a huge production package and multiple cameras to cut to when the casters get dry throats. Aside from advocating pre-recorded content to smooth over the cracks, Mike says the primary focus should be community interaction.

"Use delays as an opportunity to interact with the audience, and maybe even educate those less familiar with your chosen game," Mike says. "As eSports grows there is more and more cross pollination of fan bases, and a CS:GO tournament might find some LoL or CoD fans checking it out to see what all the buzz is about. Use downtime to get them up to speed, because people who understand the game on a basic level will have a better viewer experience."