No more empty seats: Gaules will spend remainder of IEM Rio CS:GO Major inside the venue following backlash

Gaules, the voice of Brazilian Counter-Strike, will broadcast all of the remaining IEM Rio Major matches inside the arena rather than being in the fan fest when FURIA are not playing, ESL announced today.

The change comes after a few rather empty quarterfinal matches in Jeunesse Arena because fans chose to be outside in the fan fest with Gaules, other streamers, and CS:GO players rather than watching the matches in their seats.

This sparked a community reaction on social media and Reddit, with lots of viewers complaining about how empty the venue was when FURIA were not there. While many believe the lack of fans in the arena is the reason for this change, ESL, the organizer of the IEM Rio Major, claimed it put Gaules inside the Jeunesse Arena because the weather in Rio de Janeiro is not good.

“Given the weather adversities that occurred during the second match at fan fest, which had cases of wind and heavy rain, we decided to move Gaules inside the Jeunesse Arena until the end of the championship,” ESL Brasil said. “The decision was made ensuring that the operation of the Gaules stream is not stopped, which could happen yesterday and we have [weather] alerts for Saturday and Sunday.

This change should effectively ensure that the Jeunesse Arena will be packed with fans inside, even when FURIA are not playing. ESL Brasil said Gaules will be in the fan fest to hang out when there are no games being played.

Gaules intended to be in the fan fest throughout the entire playoffs to be with the fans that didn’t buy a ticket to watch the event inside Jeunesse Arena, but he and ESL changed what was planned during the event, initially putting him inside for FURIA matches.