MLG announces Anaheim 2014 date, conflicts with DreamHack

Major League Gaming will be coming back to Anaheim, California in 2014 on June 13-15, according to a tweet by Executive Vice President Adam Apicella.

This year’s MLG Anaheim Spring Championships, held at the Anaheim Convention Center, broke previous event records with more than 21,000 attendees over the course of the weekend. The event featured professional tournaments in Blizzard’s StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, Riot Games' League of Legends, and Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

“Based on feedback from our MLG community, I think the Spring Championship was one of the most successful events in the 10-year history of the company,” MLG CEO Sundance DiGiovanni told GameSpot at the time. "I think we can attribute the success of our Anaheim events to a number of factors: the close proximity to our development partners--Activision, Riot, and Blizzard; the overall growth and support of the competitive gaming community; and how easy it is to travel to southern California."

MLG's Anaheim 2014 dates coincide with E3's 2014 dates and location, scheduled to be held June 10-12 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. MLG’s Anaheim dates conflict with Sweden-based event and tournament organizer DreamHack, who will be holding their annual Summer event from June 14-17 in Jönköping, Sweden. While neither organization has announced the games for their 2014 competitions, StarCraft II and Valve’s Dota 2 have potential for overlap. DreamHack officials say that MLG has not contacted them regarding the overlap.

“DreamHack presented the dates for DreamHack Summer 2014 on May 16, 2012,” DreamHack Head of eSports Tomas “greykarn” Hermansson said to GameSpot. “I'm not aware of any communications with MLG regarding this.”

“We're very keen about trying to avoid conflicts when it comes to our events with early communication and also try to track the eSports calendar all year around. Some conflicts can't be avoided but when it comes to Summer and Winter we have used the same dates/set of days for 12 years. We have no more comment on the matter."

On November 15, 2012, Major League Gaming, DreamHack, and the Electronic Sports League announced a partnership to “unify and elevate eSports globally.”

Among the details outlined at the time included a universal ranking system, unified competition structure, and a master tournament calendar. “One event calendar ensuring a minimum or no conflicts to ease players’ schedules and enables fans across the globe to easily spectate.”

Major League Gaming has declined comment.