Due to a number of significant event production delays and tournament quality concerns that have arisen during our planning in Tokyo, we have made the decision to move Ascension Pacific to Jakarta, Indonesia.
Ascension Pacific will now take place from 20-29 September 2024.
We understand this is a big change and that some of our fans may be disappointed. But we felt this decision was necessary for the benefit of our teams and community.
Ascension is a key tournament in our competitive season; representing a time for celebration and an opportunity to see new stars come to life. So it is important to us that the event meets the standards our fans have come to expect from us.
Unfortunately, we were not able to land on a satisfactory solution in Tokyo to deliver an event of the quality we want. Going forward with the current plan would have forced us to make compromises to the overall quality and accessibility for our fans across APAC. We were facing limited broadcast options, restricted format changes and potentially difficult competitive conditions for our teams.
With all these factors in mind, we chose to pivot our location and produce the event elsewhere.
This was not an easy decision to make, but we are grateful for the support from our Indonesian community. Their fandom and passion played a big part in our decision to move the tournament to Jakarta.
We are confident that this change will allow us to host the best possible Ascension Pacific for everyone, including high quality broadcast, an improved format, and the opportunity to watch matches live at an affordable price.
However, we recognize that this change is disappointing to our Japanese fans, so we plan to bring the Ascension experience directly to them in other ways. For example, we will host live viewing parties in Japan. We are still ironing out schedules and details, but more information will be shared on our Japanese social media channels soon.
FORMAT UPDATE
As mentioned above, our original tournament format was heavily restricted in Tokyo. However, we are now able to update our format to provide a more straight-forward, competitive experience for our teams.
The tournament will now be structured as a 10 team double elimination bracket played across 8 tournament days. This is a simpler format that will allow for lower bracket opportunities until the grand finals. Matches will be played in a best-of-3 format before switching to a best-of-5 for lower and grand finals.
We will be sharing more information soon regarding our qualified teams and brackets. In the meantime, thank you for your continued passion in our sport. We hope you will join us in cheering our teams on in September.