The Six Invitational 2023 is done and dusted. It was an amazing event with iconic matches, mesmerizing storylines, and promising announcements for the future of the game. That said, it wasn’t a perfect event. The biggest complaint was that only 6 of the 26 playoff games were in front of a crowd. This understandably left a lot of people, both players and viewers, upset.
The viewers were more likely to miss out on seeing their favorite player on stage and for many players, they may have missed their only chance to be on the stage of a SI. Remember, not every player is a force of nature like Nesk or Canadian. Some players only get one shot at a Six Invitational. Limiting their already rare chance to appear on stage is a gut punch to the players just as much as their fans.
But 6 matches and 6 teams in front of a Montreal crowd isn’t the real reason people are unhappy. Otherwise there’d be many more complaints about the Jönköping Major, which had 8 teams and 7 matches. Not a huge increase in team representation or the amount of matches, yet no criticism. Why?
The answer is the format of Jönköping compared to SI23. SI23’s tournament format led to a bloated playoffs bracket that was logistically impossible to run on a stage. As a result, a majority of playoffs had to be played before a crowd was present. When the matches on stage finally did start 3/4 of playoffs were already over and everyone knew it. Everyone felt it.
Just look at the playoff bracket, there’s no other word for it other than bloated. It looks more like the start of a Fighting Game tournament’s open bracket than the playoffs to the biggest event of Siege’s calendar with only the best of the best teams remaining.
What caused such a bloated playoff bracket?
Many would point at the losers bracket but other tournaments in other esports incorporate losers brackets without any of the limitations SI23 had. Even other Invitationals have featured the entirety of the playoffs while keeping a losers bracket, so that isn’t the problem here.
The real reason is the group stage. Instead of culling the weaker teams like it’s meant to, the group stage became more for seeding than anything else. (Or winning a map if you’re APAC) With barely any teams eliminated in groups, playoffs then had to pull double duty, removing the weaker teams that should have been gone already in addition to showing the real high quality matches.
Had the 3rd and 4th place teams been eliminated in groups, the bracket would have been much cleaner and allowed the entirety of playoffs to be shown on stage. That’s not a random prediction or assumption on my part. I know it would have been possible because that’s exactly how SI20 operated. All 14 playoff matches were on stage that year.
By rendering the group stage nearly moot, Ubisoft and ESL/FACEIT unintentionally limited the amount of matches that could be shown on stage. 6 matches on stage was only a symptom.
Of course if SI20’s format were to be used, one of the most interesting storylines from SI23 wouldn’t have existed. Astralis would have never made it to playoffs and never made their insane losers bracket run after going 1-3 in groups. Now I thoroughly enjoyed the run Astralis made but I would’ve taken more playoff matches on stage over what they accomplished. Call it cutthroat but if you have a losing record in the group stage, you shouldn’t go to playoffs.
Going into 2023 Siege esports has a lot of question marks, more than anyone is really comfortable with. However, the planning around SI24 shouldn’t be one of them. SI20’s format is proven to work, and SI23 can serve as an example of what not to do when it comes to tournament format and the importance of showing the entirety of playoffs.