Attendees at the player feedback meeting at the ESL Pro League season 7 finals in Dallas.

I often get asked what it takes to run 10 professional esport tournaments around the world. There is a lot that goes into it that remains unseen, from a technical, broadcasting, in-game and human point of view.

One of the most important things to ensure success is communicating with the professionals. The ones that must perform, after being exposed to all our systems and the people that work for us. Their feedback is key to improving the events.

The picture above is from what we call the player feedback meeting. It is a mandatory meeting that we hold at every ESL Pro League playoff event. All teams are required to send a manager / coach and at least one player. They are told to think about and give their honest feedback on all levels of the ESL experience.

In Dallas this meeting was held in the player hotel at 10 AM day of the semi-finals. For that reason, Team Liquid, NAVI, Astralis and Faze were exempt from attending. The other 12 teams participated in a meeting which lasted for 1,5 hours (initially scheduled for 60 minutes).

Here are some of the topics that was discussed in the room:

· Player break

· Rules adaptation (for instance: overtime money, coaching in freezetime)

· The ESL tournament format

Some smaller stuff, like players asking to be able to stream music from the tournament computers during warm-up, can possibly be implemented already for the Belo Horizonte event. The feedback on the different topics has been circulated in our organization and the information forms the base for discussion within the ESL system about what to change — and if it should change.

While I did not attend our Dota Major in Birmingham this past week, a meeting with the teams was held there as well. The format for Dota competitions has been contentious, and how to change it so that more people are happy, was one of the main points on that agenda — we have some months until the next event in that game and hope to be able to come up with something that will work.

These meetings are key, and since we want everyone to be able to say exactly what is on their mind, with no filter, I cannot relay any actual conversations. Team representatives need to be able to rely on that what`s said in the room, stays in the room, the same way they need to be able to rely that we keep the information we get about them through our other channels for communication confidential as well.

After the players left the meeting room in Dallas, a summary of the discussions was jotted down and shared with the teams that could not attend due to their tournament obligations. It`s contents was also sent to player representative Scott Smith, for broader visibility.