As of 8PM EST tonight, registration for the ninth TeamSpeak Team Liquid SC2 Open tournament will be allowed for all players.  This event is the second qualifier for the PokerStrategy.com TSL3 tournament hosted by Team Liquid and will feature compLexity’s Stalife, FireZerg, Antimage, and Ryan.

The maps that will be played in this tournament are Shakuras Plateau, Metalopolis, Xel’Naga Caverns, Lost Temple, and Scrap Station. The tournament begins January 15, 2011 at 12pm EST and is limited only to players on the North American servers. The bracket size for the tournament is 2048 players, which is double the amount of players from the first qualifier. The winner of the tournament will receive immediate qualification for TSL3 and a $100 cash prize.

Prizes

1st:    $100 + Qualify for TSL3
2nd:    $50 + 100 TSL3 qualifier points
3rd-4th:  $25 + 51 TSL3 qualifier points
5th-8th:  26 TSL3 qualifier points
9th-16th: 14 TSL3 qualifier points

For more information on the event, or is you wish to sign up, click here.

Earlier today, ESFI World talked with SK Gaming’s managing director Alexander Muller about the recent news regarding former WarCraft 3 star and current StarCraft 2 player Fredrik “MaDFroG” Johansson’s departure from the team. In the original announcement released by SK Gaming, not many details were given regarding the circumstances behind the team’s decision not to renew MaDFroG’s contract. Muller pinned down most of the issue to SK Gaming simply not wanting to pay Johansson’s asking price.

“Fredrik needs more budget than we are willing to pay for one StarCraft 2 player at the moment,” explained Muller. “He is a great guy and player and we had a good time to check where he and SK are in terms of StarCraft 2.” He continues, “But for him to do what he wants, probably moving to Korea and all, we would have to invest way more than what we think [an organization] should in StarCraft 2 these days.”

Read the full article at ESFI World.

On January 11, 2011, the founder of HangWith.me Jason Tugman posted a video on YouTube all about the business side of gaming as a sponsor. Tugman talks about how eSports tournaments, such as SCReddit, are great ways for small businesses with gamers as target markets to become known in the community. HangWith.me was one of SCReddit’s sponsors for their invitational tournament that was held January 8th and 9th of this year.

The main idea of the video is that sponsors and gaming organizations have the potential to acquire a staggering increase in brand recognition. Tugman himself found that his Return on Investments was so great that it made his sponsorship of SCReddit worthwhile despite the investment costs. Through the use of ads and commentator shout outs at the beginning of each match, the sponsors would get several visits and even registrations on their websites. Even with just a HangWith.me banner on theSCReddit website, Tugman was receiving a huge amount of visits just to see what his site had to offer. Tugman’s overall view is that investing in tournaments, gaming sites, or a gaming team is a great way for small businesses related to gaming to get their names out into the community and to explore the demographic for future expansion.

To visit Tugman’s website go here.
To visit SCReddit go here.

On Monday, ESEA announced a new policy for the ESEA Invite divisions that should greatly enhance the professionalism and security of the league.

In what will require a $100/player deposit by each team with a title sponsor or organization, funds for travel to the ESEA LAN Playoffs and Finals will be secured. The deposit will be refunded for teams that do not make the playoffs, and will not be expected from teams who play independently of any organization or primary sponsor.

Below is the official announcement by ESEA:

Each season since we started the ESEA League, we’ve worked tirelessly to simplify and improve the process of competitive gaming while also trying to advance what teams and players should come to expect from a gaming company. Having made significant strides in those areas, we now feel we can begin to focus our efforts on further stabilizing, and in turn legitimizing, Invite divisions, teams, players, and the organizations that support them.

To that end we’re pleased to announce our first initiative which will be to require any Invite team that has a title sponsor (team name or tag) to pay a $100.00 deposit per player at the start of each season. The money will go towards travel expenses for teams that qualify for LAN playoffs and will be fully refunded for teams that are eliminated from playoff contention.

While the initial amount might not seem like a lot of money, it’s a step in the right direction and will be built upon during future seasons to help eliminate instances of players representing organizations for the entirety of a regular season, based on the promise of travel funding, only to be left out to dry with days left to book airline tickets and hotels at inflated prices.

CompLexity Gaming fully supports this change and provided this statement to ESEA:

compLexity is happy to support this new initiative. The player / team dynamic is an important relationship, and it is critical that players and teams uphold their commitments to one another.

More information about this change can be found by clicking here.