When Starcraft 2 fans wander through Krefeld on a Sunday morning, it can only mean one thing: it’s Homestory Cup again. The TaKeTV gaming bar is something like the living room for the international SC2 scene.
The tournament has a lot of LAN party charm. Keyboards and mice click at the entrance, and fans can also gamble here themselves. The smell of pizzas and doner kebabs you have brought with you is in the air, non-alcoholic wheat beers and coffees are ordered at the bar. One or the other visitor fights a hangover: The after-show party last day went until five in the morning. This is where fans and e-athletes celebrate together.
“It’s absolutely fantastic that we can finally do events again where people from all over the world come together,” says TaKeTV founder and CEO Dennis Gehlen. “That makes the Homestory Cup a special event when people from Asia, the USA, Canada and Europe live out their hobbies together and have fun together.”
On the final day of the tournament, the bar filled up around 2 p.m. and the volume level increased with it. Fans spread out across the coveted seating: sofas, bar stools, groups of tables. The rest stand around or form circles of seats on the floor. But everyone is staring spellbound at the numerous monitors and following the matches between the e-sports professionals. Fan favorites like Finn Joona “Serral” Sotala are loudly supported and cheered, and there’s an opportunity for photos and small talk between matches.
Homestoy Cup part of the ESL Pro Tour for the first time
But the pros aren’t just here for fun. For the 21st edition of the Homestory Cup, the tournament is officially part of the ESL Pro Tour for the first time. This means that the players are about qualifying points for the World Cup in Katowice in early 2023.
That hasn’t changed anything about the ambition of the e-athletes, says Gehlen: “Even if the players here have a lot of fun, whenever we went to the players, even before, they are concentrated, as if it were about the world championship are highly competitive people who didn’t come here to lose.”