A bit of a rough crowd here. I'm interested to know how many of you attended any of the LANs. If you didn't, then you have absolutely zero knowledge of how hard these guys worked. How many of you supported them by watching their streams, donating, getting and gifting subs, buying merc? If you didn't do these things, then how the hell do you expect them to be able to stay afloat?
Interesting statement, you seem to forget that (obviously) the most people watched the Final on Stream, so if you only show the 100 LAN-Attendees how hard you worked and the Stream Viewers have Zero Knowledge about it (which you stated), you obviously would have done something really wrong.
Escape was (in my opinion) never really communicative, a lot of people didnt know how they have the money for 4 People and a studio, or thought they had a lot of support by sponsors.
Maybe they concentrated then too much on the LAN-Attendees, of course you have then a great LAN with the people there, all of them tell how great it was, but then don't be surprised if the stream viewers don't say the same.
And if you decide to invite Suomi and increase the Prizepool with the only reasoning of "having too much money leftover", you dont give the feeling of needing the money from viewers.
I never heard about Escape Merch too, especially not at the final and I watched nearly all of the ECL Event.
So if they have Merch and were really interested in selling the Merch, they advertised it really bad.