Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your role on the Italian Counter-Strike scene?

Sure, my name is Alain "aLaaa" Antoniazzi and I work as CEO for SHADE, an Esport Agency vertical on CS:GO operating worldwide. We're mostly known for having given birth to the popular pros' betting advice site CSGO.guru during the "skins betting boom" back in 2014-2015. Although nowadays we mostly work close to tournament operators and brands.

The French community may remember me for Team Doges, an Italian team (now dead) we fueled back in 2016, that also ended winning one of the first editions of the Aera Tournament.

For a year we've been operating KNIFEROUND.it, a non-profit project developed in order to provide oxygen and regenerate the Italian scene. Here in Italy we put together the community in a Vakarm-like website, something mandatory in order to grow solid roots. But we also broadcast all the International CS:GO events in Italian (Blast, DH, IEM, ESLOne and more) and we take care of organizing and transmitting most of the events taking place in the country.

If you want to follow the Italian scene, this is the place to go

Do you yourself have some past experience as a competitive player?

Yes, I started playing Counter-Strike when I was 15, back in CS 1.6 I used to compete for Team Impact, one of the most prominent Italian teams, but tried my luck in several EU mixes as well. However, I stopped playing competitively in 2007, and since then I have followed the development of the scene mostly focusing on the International side. I didn't mess again (directly) with the Italian scene 'till about 10 years later.

Of all the European countries, Italy is one of the only ones to not have a high level team/player. Is the game popular in your country? How big is the community?

Surprisingly enough, CS:GO is among the most popular games in Italy, with a user base ranging from 200K to 350K people. However, some serious lack of investments and planning crippled the Italian scene for years, and prevented the evolution of this fairly good amount of casual players into something beneficial for the competitive scene.

But this is something that started changing last year with the launch of the Italian Pro League, a local PUG season (FPL-Like) developed together with FACEIT and currently on the verge of its 2nd Season.

How do you rank CS:GO in Italy compared to other big games such as LoL or DotA 2? Is Italy better represented on those and CS:GO is an exception, or are esports not very developed in Italy in general?

When it comes to teams, currently I can easily tell that CS:GO is the PC esport featuring the highest amount of teams, as we've roughly 40 teams competing in the national championship (back in late 2016 we had only six teams). Although CS:GO viewership figures are still developing, and LoL is still a step ahead in that, but we should keep in mind that Riot has been backing LoL from both a financial and infrastructural standpoint for years, while KNIFEROUND started rebooting the Italian CS:GO scene just a year ago.

What was the situation on the other CS games, 1.6 and CS:S? Was Italy as rarely represented back then as now on CS:GO or was it a break when people had to change games?

Back in the days we had our ups and down. When it comes to CS 1.6, Cubesports were without any doubt the reference Italian team (crazy how some of these players are still playing nowadays). But personally I believe we shined the most in the CS:S era, with OX.ENERMAX competing at a fairly good level, performing well also at International events such as Insomnia. In CS:GO we didn't start too bad, with CPlay doing fairly well at the beginning of the game, but then everything fell apart. However, now compared to the early days we sport a way more consistent community, and  we're enjoying a peak we never experienced before, as we never had so many teams competing and improving.

What are the best Italian teams and where do you see them compared to the European subtop?

Now that we stabilized our roots, we're improving quickly, and I believe that we'll see one or two Italian teams making their way through the EU Tier-3 scene prior the end of the current year. For example, according to what we observed in the recent past, at both Dreamhack and ZOTAC Masters qualifiers, teams such as Forge looked fairly near to the European sub-top (IE: during the ZOTAC Qualifier, they managed to take Valiance to OTs, and also defeated Singularity). However Forge aren't alone, also MKERS (biohazard's team) and MorningStars (Stylahhhhh's team) are performing fairly well and show good potential.

Are some Italian players able to make a living thanks to CS:GO? Are Italian organizations able to afford 5 full-time players?

Yes, right now there are at least three organizations capable of offering a salary to their players. Although it is worth remembering that these financial offers aren't super-high nor capable to self-sustain the players yet, but it's surely a step in the right direction and they'll very likely increase in value as the Italian scene keeps drawing attention and exposure.

There’s a national championship, ESL Italia Championship, does it gather the best teams from the country? How important is it for your national scene?

EIC (ESL Italia Championship) is without any doubt one of the most important things that has happened to the IT scene in the past year. Bringing back ESL into the local CS:GO scene after several years of break is something that evolved the landscape and enhanced growth. It also provided us with a strong partner able to co-invest into the scene and develop serious long-term plans.

What are the other big Italian events, the LANs, to not miss for the teams?

As the rest, also the LAN landscape is still evolving. After many years without any (or with no more than a single) event per year, I'm happy to see how CS:GO in 2018 will be the esport featuring the highest amount of LIVE events in Italy.

We started in mid-June with the ZOTAC Masters European Finals, and we just completed EIC Finals. We'll have 2-3 more LAN events happening during the course of the year, but I cannot unveil much right now.

The Finals of EIC 2018 took place at the Vodafone Theatre, in Milan, late last june
(photo: KNIFEROUND)

Do some young players seem promising for the future? Can some of them emerge thanks to leagues such as FPL?

Absolutely, the most famous is obviously Lorenzo "Biohazard" Garufi, he's doing very well in FPL and he also attended GAMERZ early this year (edging the Final). But he's not alone, also Marco "Sparker" Forte is quite aligned with him (he made a splash in the Tier-3 with the UK team Endpoint about an year ago). Apart from them, there are also several young talents developing such as Alex 'FUSiON' Dincof. But also it is worth remembering that some CS1.6/CSS veterans such as Riccardo 'kIMERA' D'Urso, Guglielmo 'GUGLi' Carraro and Christian 'Stylahhhhh' Forte, are still having a tremendous impact in the game and in developing the Italian scene as whole.

We know that the UK scene completely fell apart when changing to CS:GO because some players weren’t able to get along with others and rosters were changing non-stop. Could this explain the weakness of the Italian scene, or do you feel that the human relations within your scene are healthy?

Animosity is surely an issue within the UK scene, but overall their strong infrastructures and the solid events' environment helped in keeping a good players and viewership numbers.

On the other hand, the Italian scene mostly suffered the lack of infrastructures and incompetence (as we're talking about Italy you shouldn't be surprised). To make it short: a bunch of people without any connection nor knowledge led the community for years, dooming it. KNIFEROUND reverted this, placing the most prominent players and figures back in the leading roles, which is the reason why you started spotting the Italian flag more often over HLTV and Twitch. Anyway we still have a very long and bumpy road ahead.

Talking about human relationships, teams and players are quite fine with each other, of course there are some good rivalries (especially between the top-3 teams), but overall everyone is paddling in the same direction, and again the credit goes to the veterans that stepped up.

In your opinion, what are the other obstacles that could slow down the growth of the Italian CS:GO scene?

In the past years, games such as Call of Duty, Rainbow Six and Overwatch took advantage of the weakness of the Italian CS:GO scene. So now that funds and players started flowing back to Counter-Strike I guess that some games will have their "garden" scaled down, which may result in some "resistance" that may potentially hinder the growth of CS:GO. Although I hope we'll enjoy a smooth transition, as honestly Counter-Strike will reclaim the throne anyway.

Another issue could be related to the events, as in order to have a healthy scene we need to avoid monopoly situations, so I hope we'll see more and more tournament operators putting their eyes on the Italian market as it moves forward and mature.

Milan also hosted the European finals of the ZOTAC Cup (photo: KNIFEROUND)

Not many or no big CS:GO tournaments take place in Italia, in spite of worldwide circuits such as DreamHack Open or ESL. How could you explain that? Would a big event encourage the scene to develop?

We actually have pretty good relations with ESL, Dreamhack, FACEIT and also RFRSH, with all of them fairly interested in the developing of the IT scene.

With the launch of KNIFEROUND a year ago, we started broadcasting all their events on a regular basis (something that never happened before), and we also started educating the IT audience towards the International scene. Although growing an informed user base is something that requires time and patience, I believe that starting from the current year Italy will be fully able to host International events, and this is something that must happen in parallel with the Italian teams getting better and better. We got the first taste of International CS:GO (since FACEIT Finals in 2015) just a few weeks ago for ZOTAC Masters, and despite some juvenile issues the quality of the content was good, and the event helped in drawing attention on Italy.

In France, many political ideas are encouraging the growth of esports, by easing the professionalization of players, acknowledging the discipline and so on. What is your country doing for esports?

This is a discussion raging in Italy as well, but I'm strongly against comparing Esports to Sports. Not because I believe that regulations shouldn't take place, but because enforcing them so early may damage the organic growth of the Italian scene. In France and in other well developed local scenes, regulations based on solid knowledge may help a lot. But in Italy an uninformed and rough "government" involvement may cripple the whole market to death. So right now I hope the politicians will stay away from the market, and the only involvement I would like to welcome is one regulating/allowing cash betting, as for some weird reason it is allowed for LoL but not for CS:GO (due to a ridiculous century old gore policy).

Does the Italian media talk about esports from time to time, or is it not really covered in Italian culture? If they are talking about it, is it in a pejorative way as we can often see in France?

Yes and no. Esports surely started appearing on the TV news more often, although mostly with content related to FIFA. Overall esports are still considered a niche, and even if they are well known by most of the population ranging between 14 to 26 years, there is still some resistance from TV outlets in considering games such as CS:GO as main-stream content.
Although this is something that may change soon, especially thanks to several International TOs slowly pressuring TVs in order to offer this kind of coverage.

Just to see what kind of Italian you are: pizza, ravioli or spaghetti?

Pineapple pizza.

Joke aside, I'll go for spaghetti, as #SpaghettiCSGO is the official hashtag of the Italian scene.

Thanks for your answers! You have the honor to close out this interview, you can say whatever you want to the French community.