Aurora's owner highlights a major issue at the IEM Cologne Major

Valery “L3rich” Kharitonov called the IEM Cologne Major the worst Major in the history of the Counter-Strike 2 pro scene in terms of sticker sales.

The Aurora owner made this statement on Telegram.

"Regarding stickers at this Major: this is by far the worst Major in terms of sticker sales. The situation definitely won’t improve.

I’ll elaborate on my thoughts on this tomorrow, but what can definitely be said is that for organizations, the value of the Major will now be significantly lower from a financial standpoint (obviously, from a competitive standpoint, it’s still the most important event), and the number of Tier 2 and Tier 3 organizations will definitely decline.

Consequently, the number of one-off sticker sales in America and Asia will also drop significantly.”

According to Valery “L3rich” Kharitonov, the situation will not improve in the second half of the event, which will have a very negative impact on the revenues of esports organizations that profit from selling stickers of IEM Cologne Major participants. The owner of Aurora believes that while the value of majors from a sporting perspective will remain the same, esports organizations will be less interested in them due to reduced profits.

As a reminder, analyst Duncan “Thorin” Shields previously predicted the winner of the IEM Cologne Major CS2 tournament.