13 fun facts about the Intel Extreme Masters Singapore (plus some exclusive news about the IEM World Championships!)

You thought you knew everything – you read the Liquipedia entries, glued your eyes to Twitch, trawled the forums. Then we brought you behind-the-scenes photos of the Intel Extreme Masters Singapore. And now we’re bringing you a little bit more you didn’t know about the pro-gaming tour – as well as an exclusive scoop on what ESL has got planned.

1. This is the second year the Electronic Sports League and Intel have brought the IEM to Singapore.

The Electronic Sports League (ESL) and Intel dropped their Intel Extreme Masters anchor in Southeast Asia at last year’s SITEX exhibition for both StarCraft II and League of Legends. That was also the first time ESL hosted a large scale tournament in Southeast Asia.

2. SITEX features very heavily in the IEM ‘storyline’

The Intel Extreme Masters promotes SITEX in their videos, and the IT exhibition features heavily in the season’s storyline. It might help that they have been “a great partner” to the brand, according to Intel’s George Woo.

3. The tour has stopped here just for local fans.

“We see ourselves as the event circuit that takes care of the gamer. Not just by going where we know it’s a slam dunk. We want to go to places where we can help develop eSports and help fans meet somebody like Mvp, Nestea, MakNoon, Grubby, those big superstars in gaming. We feel like it’s really important overall for eSports that we keep traveling to different regions, different countries,” said Michal ‘Carmac’ Blicharz, ESL’s director of the Intel Extreme Masters.

4. Singapore is one of the largest Intel Extreme Masters venues outside of Europe

The most similar venue to Singapore’s outside of Europe would be the New York Comic Con. However that had been a StarCraft II only event and featured just 20 computers in the backstage, along with a one-on-one front stage with just two player booths. Singapore currently has 40 PCs in the backstage area.