The first LEC Arena Roadtrip has kicked off in Spain’s Madrid Arena. The successful day of competition opened with a best-of-three between heavyweights G2 and home favorites GIANTX, with the latter claiming a closely-fought 2-1 win. We spoke to G2’s General Manager Romain Bigeard for an interview following the defeat.
Image credit: G2 Esports
Esports.net: Just starting with this event itself, how important is it to have some more arena events like this, particularly with the number of arena finals having reduced in recent years?
Romain: I think those events are everything for the LEC. For esports, that’s how the game is meant to be played — under super high pressure situations on the stage in front of thousands of people. That’s what makes us pro players for real — it’s not playing so often in the same place, which is a small place with not a big crowd, which feels like a bedroom at one point a bit. A really nice, fancy, optimised bedroom costing millions — fair, but nothing beats the live audience and the live crowd and we saw it today. It was a really, really cool series.
Does the arena atmosphere even make it feel more important than some of the Winter/Spring studio finals?
Romain: In a weird way, more pressure because you want to make the fans proud and you want to perform. And you want to show the world that you are practising for the most important games, which are going to be the games on the international stage at MSI, at Worlds and so on. And those games will be in front of a crowd. So if you want to get to best practise, you need to play those games and you need to show that you’re able to perform under such high pressure.
Lee Jones: A few of your players haven’t been at the top level since there have been fewer events.
Do you think there could’ve been some nerves that played a part in the loss?
Romain: Today was a good test for sure.
We failed. We failed today. We have another day, versus an opponent even stronger on paper. So we’re taking it really seriously. And yeah, maybe we choked a bit today, they played really well, to be fair to them. So yeah, let’s see tomorrow.
How much could stadium experience like this help when you do go to MSI or Worlds?
Romain: It’s going to be so helpful for any kind of other international event. This is so valuable. That’s why when we first heard that these events will happen, I said yes to every invitation instantly. It’s just good. So we’re in Madrid, we’re going to go to Paris in two weeks, and this is invaluable experience.
Would you like to see G2 be the hosts of one of these? Do you have a city in mind, if so?
Romain: There’s a lot of business rationale connecting to such an event, and we don’t really have a big city base right now. Or maybe it could be Berlin, but it makes no sense to organise something in Berlin when we have the LEC studio there already. So no, I don’t think we will organize ours, but for sure we’re going to travel everywhere, I’m down.
Lee Jones: On the news that Caps has re-signed, while the rest of the squad is contracted until 2026…
Do you think that will help with the roster growing together now that there should be no looming roster drama in the near future?
Romain: 100%. The amount of chaos Caps not re-signing would have brought not just to our team, but to the entire ecosystem, was something I was not looking forward to. So I’m really happy we ended up on a on a good deal for both parties. And yeah, he’s going to stay at G2, so it’s cool.
Credit: LEC
Lee Jones: For a stadium event, I was surprised to see you dressed normally today.
Why no body paint?
Romain: I reserve that for the final, so it’s something exceptional and I enjoy every single minute of it. And yeah, maybe the last time I did it was for the last final, you know, and those are precious moments. So no, if we go to the final, I will have body paint.