These International Championships cannot seem to distance themselves from controversy. First, London’s timing and team sheets, and Melbourne’s lack of a stream. Now, an attendance cap for the upcoming Sao Paulo International Championships. The tournament is only a month away, and this news has likely ruined a number of non-South American player’s planned trips that were not courtesy of an official stipend.

First, Let’s Talk About Melbourne

Failure to provide live coverage from another large tournament? Sounds like TPCi.

After setting up the International Championships structure, and allowing top players from across the world to compete in different countries, you’d think there would be an extra push to stream these high-profile tournaments. Sadly no, and we’ll likely never receive an explanation for why this happened. Streaming should be a priority for TPCi when it comes to an international event. Getting people to watch the game will only help it grow. We as spectators should not have to rely on Twitter or other unofficial sources (that usually do an amazing job) for live coverage. I can understand not streaming a few regionals. However, there is little excuse for not streaming the International Championships, regardless of what country they’re in.

Now Onto That Attendance Cap…

128. 128 players is the max attendance for an International tournament. Does this bring back memories of how the 2016 World Championships was closed off to spectators, and how we found out about it only a month in advance?

Seriously, I have no clue why TPCi would have an attendance cap that is lower than the amount of players at Worlds last year. Not only that, they’re giving stipends to the top four players in each region. This further restricts the number of players who are able to compete. For a series of tournaments that encourages players to travel to other countries, it makes little sense to cap the attendance at such a low number. It also makes the communities’ efforts to organize tournaments to award stipend money a complete waste at this point.

Another aspect affected is Championship Point and prize money distribution, if the player number were to not reach 128. How CP and prizes are given is based on attendance. For example, if 127 people were to enter instead of 128, Championship Points would be distributed to the Top 16 instead of the Top 32 according to the current system. This is more of an issue with the number the player cap is set at rather than there being a cap at all. This wouldn’t be an issue if the cap wasn’t in place, however.

To make matters worse, since this is now a smaller tournament, there’s probably not going to be an effort to stream this event either.

What Does This Mean for Indianapolis?

Honestly, I have no clue. North American tournaments are usually well organized. In light of the circumstances that have plagued these Internationals, there’s a reason to be worried. TPCi needs to drastically improve their communication with their players, as announcements like these cannot be tolerated. It seems like every announcement about these tournaments are nothing but bad news. Players will continue to voice their complaints into the void of Twitter, only to not receive any official response.

If you would like to view the official announcements for the Latin America International Championships, check here for stipend info and here for more info on the attendance cap.

Images courtesy of Pokemon.com