Tips for Watching CS:GO Tournaments
The massive popularity of CS:GO and esports, in general, has led to many people looking for details of how to watch the biggest tournaments. What do you need to know about following these games and supporting your favorite teams or players?
Find the Right Tournament
The first thing for newcomers to understand is that there are various Counter-Strike tournaments each year. There is no definitive answer to the question of which is the biggest and best of them, with some of the biggest tourneys including the ESL Pro League, the Blast.tv Major, and the IEM in Cologne.
With Valve backing, the Majors are regarded by many fans as being the most important esports tournaments of the year, with the Blast Premier World Finals also highly rated thanks to the impressive prize pool on offer. If you want to see a female-only tournament, the ESL Impact League is a good choice.
Best of all, these events are spread throughout the year, so instead of choosing between them, you can normally watch different tournaments throughout the year without missing any of them. Don’t forget that these events aren’t all carried out in the same way, with some played exclusively online while others are carried out in huge stadiums.
Comparison with Other Popular Tournaments
The idea of watching or taking part in online gaming tournaments has gone mainstream for several different types of games. As well as Counter-Strike, other shooter games like Call of Duty and some sports games are among the biggest titles in the esports world right now.
Another way of taking part in tournaments can be seen when we look at the slot games offered in a casino online. These games of chance now offer various features and themes, as shown by Big Buffalo, Wicked 777, and Tropical Bonanza, among others. They can be played with real-money stakes and are sometimes offered in the form of a tournament where each player tries to climb the table by winning as many times as possible, with a list of prizes for those in the top places.
"esports" (CC BY 2.0) by sam_churchill
How to Live-Stream the Action?
The good news is that you’ll find a number of reputable sites that live-stream the major CS:GO events and other big esports tournaments. This look at some of the top esports streaming options right now lists options including Facebook and YouTube as being the best places to find events of this type to watch.
It's worth keeping an eye out for any future agreements between streaming services and esports leagues. With Netflix testing its cloud gaming service and Amazon Prime also streaming games, it’ll be interesting to see if these services bid for esports rights at some point in the future.
For the moment, you can watch CS:GO tournaments for free on a number of streaming services. With the events calendar getting busier each year, it makes sense to plan ahead and check out which tournaments you’re most interested in seeing in the next few months.
