Avalon Eventos Is Trying To Make Brazil An Esports Hotspot (And It's Working)
By Jesse Collins ·
With so much going on in esports around the world, it's easy to miss the action unless it's in your face. We sat down with Felipe Felisberto to talk about how Avalon Eventos wants to make Brazil rise to the top with their events.
Across the world, esports is getting bigger every day. We hear all about USA, Canada, and even Europe on a near daily basis, but what about other countries? From São Paulo state, Brazil, a company named Avalon Eventos hopes to bring competitive gaming into the light in South America. Felipe Felisberto recently bought into the company, putting the majority of his focus on the esports side of it. Twin Galaxies got a chance to sit down and chat with Felipe about Avalon Eventos and the best ways to run events.
Avalon Eventos has been in business for around 10 years, focusing on anime conventions and events, but that’s just not good enough to make it big. “They run some game tournaments (during the events),” Felisberto explained. “But, they needed someone focused on esports to improve that area and that is where I came in.”
The Campinas City company has been around for quite a while, but Felipe thinks it was always missing something. He’s taken things into careful consideration and he thinks he’s finally figured it out, after already running two events since his buy-in. “I took the time to evaluate everything we have and what I need in order to improve for next year. I want to improve the tournaments so that it catches the interest of college teams in the area.”
From Anime To Esports...
He plans to improve the esport community and dominate college esports in Campinas area, all while putting Campinas on the esports map. While the ground work is necessary, he was delighted to say that the area airport finally receives international flights, which opens up more possibilities or imports and exports for gamers.
The small anime convention company wasn’t always about gaming, but it has grown substantially since he became involved. “In the very beginning, the games were there just because some of the people who came to the events wanted to play. With time, we evolved to include more serious tournaments. With the rise of esports, Avalon Eventos started to bring some new games in, like League of Legends and CS:GO. From there, more people were interested in our events. We have a little bit of everything now, including esports, anime, youtube personalities, and k-pop. The biggest one took place in Campinas City and had around 5000 to 6000 people attending the whole event.”
Felipe opened up about the tournaments a little more, as well, going into more detail on how they’re run. “League of Legends and CS:GO are the only ones with online qualifiers. The finals happen during the main event, with casting and a cash prize. The prizes are still small, as the plan for 2017 was to bring casual teams. For all other games, the entry is free and there is no money prize. Players win just a medal for the same reasons: our aim for the casual players. However, we realized that players wanted to be challenged, to play against better players and teams. The semi-pro players and teams wanted to play in our tournaments, but without a proper prize, they have no interest. My goal for 2018 is to change that. Additionally, in 2017, we used Challonge, but I'm planning on changing to Battlefy or Toonament (as our go-to program for events).
As a wrap up, Felipe gave a simple DO and DON’T list for those that want to get into running their own tournaments and events.
- Do listen to feedback, from both experienced and new players.
- Do make a plan before doing.
- Do learn from others’ mistakes.
- Don’t do everything alone! Have a team and delegate!
- Don’t be a workaholic. You have to relax from time to time.
- Don’t try to reinvent the wheel (at first), but do try to innovate when you can.
The next Campinas Anime Fest will be held on April 15, 2018 in Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil.