"Skyesports Masters (2025) is going to be big" - Skyesports CEO

A convincing upper-bracket run from Gods Reign netted them the Skyesports Souvenir 2025 National Championship title win at Bengaluru last week. Upon the tournament's conclusion, Dust2 India had a brief chat with the Founder and CEO of Skyesports, Shiva Nandy.

The conversation began with calendar changes in 2025 for Counter-Strike which Shiva Nandy addressed by mentioning that the org was doubling down on their vision to build a grassroots ecosystem for Counter-Strike. He also gave a sneak peek into Skyesports' plans for Masters in October/November 2025, stating that the event would be big.

What prompted Skyesports to revise its 2025 plan for Counter-Strike?

Actually we just doubled down on our original vision. When we first ventured into the esports world, we wished to build the grassroots system and then focus on tier-1 tournaments. That's what we did with other games, even Counter-Strike too but then started to focus on tier-1 and tier-2 tournaments. We then later realized, based on some new things and then went back to the board and thought 'we need to double down on our vision and work on that', like building the grassroots ecosystem in India and then going into the tier-1 scene. If you see our vision for this year, we're going to do a lot of LAN events like this (Skyesports Souvenir), we're going to build the audience, user-base and the community and then when we do Skyesports Masters in October-November (2025), it'll be much bigger than Championship, because a proper grassroots ecosystem would be built by then.

Going ahead, the Skyesports CEO spoke about their ventures which involved government partnership and explained how the government needed some convincing before properly classifying stuff under the game of chance and skill banners before acknowledging and supporting esports like traditional sports. While not revealing the specifics, Shiva Nandy mentioned that many state governments are currently showing interest towards hosting esports events.

How did your partnership with government entities evolve and what benefits do you think it will bring to our CS ecosystem?

Working with governments has always been our vision, because if you see we've faced a lot of issues when we're creating a policy. There's game of chance and game of skill; so when we work with the government and prove what is game of chance and game of skill, the government comes forward and acknowledges that. We've been working with Tamil Nadu government, now we're working with Karnataka government. After working with two governments, we're getting inquiries from a lot of governments, I can't disclose the specifics right now but a lot of state governments are showing interest towards executing national tournaments, Asian tournaments, international tournaments and yesterday the Sports Development Authority of Tamil Nadu publicly announced that they'll do the Esports Global Championship in Chennai and we're going to add Counter-Strike also. It'll help Counter-Strike a lot especially given that it's an open ecosystem. If you see other titles here, they're super controlled but Counter-Strike is not like that. It'll be beneficial for Counter-Strike in India, 100%.

What unique opportunities have emerged from your government collaborations that wouldn't be possible with traditional esports partners?

Like I mentioned earlier, my only expectation and vision from this government partnership is make esports like traditional sports, to get the governments to acknowledge and legitimize esports.

Are there any emerging trends you’ve spotted in the Counter-Strike ecosystem that you are planning to capitalize on?

As of now, the introduction of VRS is possibly the best thing because when combined with the open ecosystem that's there now, a new tournament organizer like Skyesports can bring tier-1, tier-2 teams to the events based on their availability. That's what we're eyeing for and speaking technically, I haven't seen a lot of augmented reality integration in esports events. Yes, I've seen ESL do a lot but in India, I haven't seen.

A broader range of topics were covered in the conversation including the VRS system and Skyesports' approach of adapting to the same. Shiva Nandy expressed his gratitude and happiness towards Valve for stepping up and supporting new tournament organizers to create an open ecosystem.

Compared to last year, what infrastructure improvements has Skyesports made to enhance the LAN experience?

I want to reiterate again that last year, only two or three small issues made a very big thing like tables and stuff but if you see, after that we've restructured and done two Counter-Strike national tournaments which had zero issues. Not only that, we've done a big BGMI LAN event in Chennai, we've upgraded our system and technical equipment, right now our entire team is capable and strong enough to execute tier-1 events. I'm saying it again, this year's Skyesports Masters event is going to be big.

What are the challenges you’ve faced while transitioning towards compliance with Valve’s new guidelines for TOs and the VRS?

First of all I would like to welcome (and thank) Valve for opening up the ecosystem. Initially we never spoke to Valve and right now Valve is responding to us, they're supporting us and it's a great thing for new tournament organizers. Initially when they (Valve) launched VRS, our entire team including me, were just sitting down and reading, watching and grasping stuff for a couple of weeks. It felt like a tedious process at first but later when we understood the whole thing, we were like 'okay, this is for us'. I personally liked Valve stepping up to support new tournament organizers.