DreamHack

DreamHack
Tournament information
Sport	various esports games
Location	numerous locations
Number of tournaments	several

DreamHack
Genre	Esports; LAN Party and computer festival
Frequency	Bi-annual (Winter and Summer)
Venue	Elmia Exhibition and Convention Centre
Location(s)	Europe
Country	Sweden
Inaugurated	1994
Participants	~22,000 including ~8000 BYOC
Website
	http://www.dreamhack.se

Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

DreamHack is the world's largest digital festival, a local area network gathering with live concerts and competitions in digital art and esports first held in Malung, Sweden. DreamHack consists of several events held throughout Europe: in Stockholm and Jönköping, Sweden, Tours, France, Bucharest and Cluj, Romania, Valencia, Spain and London, England. In 2016 DreamHack will hold its first event on the American continent in Austin, Texas. ^[1]

It is recognized by the Guinness Book of Records and Twin Galaxies as being the world's largest LAN party and computer festival, as well as having the world's fastest Internet connection, and the most generated traffic.^[2] The Internet connection record was beaten in 2012 by the second largest computer festival in the world: The Gathering in Norway.^[3]

In the year 2007, the founders of DreamHack received a diploma of honor from the municipality of Jönköping for being important to business, education and society of the local community.

DreamHack winter 2004.

Event summary

DreamHack calls itself the world's largest "digital festival".^[4]^[5] The winter event consistently has approximately 10% more visitors than the summer event, but in other respects they are quite similar. Both events are 72 hours (stretching over 4 days), and have scheduled activity around the clock, every day.^[6]

As of winter 2011, the event covers the entire Elmia Exhibition and Convention Centre as well as the neighbouring ice hockey arena and racket sports centre. The total number of participants were 27,000, of which ~800 were crew.^[2]

Attendees' ages range from elementary school to senior citizens, though the average age is 16-17. People arrive from all over the world to participate. The latest DreamHack competition took place in Romania Bucharest between 24 and 27 April 2015.^[7]

The event consists of five major components: the festival, the gaming competitions, the digital arts competitions, the live concerts and the expo.

Component	Description
Festival	Every seated participant gets a table (60 cm deep and 83 cm wide), a chair, a power socket and a LAN socket through which DreamHack supplies one of the fastest Internet connections in the world as of 2011 .^[2] To this place they bring their own equipment of choice, usually a display or TV and a computer or console. Some bring their own office chairs to substitute the ones supplied. Since there is activity around the clock, participants can sleep in the adjacent sleeping halls, to which they bring their own sleeping equipment.
Gaming competitions	With a total prize pool of over 3 million SEK, the DreamHack esports competitions attract professional players from all over the world, most notably South Korea. From DreamHack, about one hundred different video streams are broadcast over the Internet, of which most cover the esports competitions. 21 of them are produced by DreamHack crew, the rest are independent and include Swedish national TV. These are watched by people from all continents in the world, and at DHW11 the number of unique viewers were over 1.6 million, which is another record.^[8]
Digital arts competitions	In the DreamHack Kreativ competition participants compete in creating all things digital, including photographs, drawings, music, 3D-models, demos, games, animations and movies. It is for many the most important part of the event, since competitions of this kind are very rare, and places where these artists get to meet their audience in person are even rarer. Some participants spend the entire event producing a creative works, such as a movie or piece of music. The hours-long final ceremony, during which all submissions are presented on the huge screens and sound system of MainStage, draws a big crowd and is highly appreciated by the audience.
Live concerts	Every evening and night there are big musical acts on MainStage. This aspect of DreamHack has increased dramatically in popularity and is a major factor in the rise in sale of daypasses, hinting that future concerts are likely to be even grander. The technological direction of the festival is reflected in that MainStage is unusually visual for a stage of this size, with a sophisticated setup of lasers, lights and professional video broadcast equipment.
Expo	Many companies present their products in the expo area and it is common for big game development studios to allow visitors to play the games currently under development. There are also various seminars and lectures, as well as a shop selling computer equipment.

DreamHack is arranged with the help of about 800 volunteers, set up in "Crew Teams". They work in shifts to provide service for the visitors around the clock, like the support crew that have a helpdesk where the participants can address their technical problems. The organization also relies on local police and security officers who patrol the area.

History

DreamHack began as a small gathering of schoolmates and friends in the basement of an elementary school in Malung in the early '90s. In 1994 it was moved to the school cafeteria and became one of the larger regional demoparties at the time. The 1994 gathering was also the first one to go by the name DreamHack.

In 1997 the event took place at Arena Kupolen in Borlänge and became the largest LAN party of Sweden and the third largest party in Scandinavia at the time. Furthermore, DreamHack 2001 and the upcoming events were held at the Elmia exhibition centre in Jönköping, where it has been since.

Starting the year 2002, DreamHack became a semiannual event with DreamHack Summer, aiming for games, taking place in June and DreamHack Winter, slightly more specific for the demo scene, being held during the last weekend of November. This difference has since blurred and perhaps been completely erased.

In 2011, DreamHack AB went through a corporate reform, renewing the company administration. DreamHack Winter 2011 was host to the League of Legends Season 1 World Championship. The next year's League of Legends World Championship was held independently.

It was announced on November 15, 2012 that DreamHack would be partnering with Major League Gaming (MLG) and Electronic Sports League (ESL) to help facilitate the growth and development of the North American and European eSports scene. This partnerships includes universal rankings, unified competition structures and more.^[9]

In 2013, the now fully featured corporation DreamHack AB also began arranging a third event during the late summer, in Stockholm. It was hosted at Globe Arenas in 2014.

In November 2015 Modern Times Group bought 100% of DreamHack for an enterprise value of SEK 244 million.^[10]

Past events

The event has broken records many times, Swedish records are marked (SR) and world records are marked (WR).

Event	Visitors	Unique hosts in network	Unique viewers	Internet speed	Total prize pool	Notes
DHW14	26,672	22,483
DHS14	21,642^[11]	17,618		40 Gbit/s^[11]
DHW13	22,810 (WR)^[11]	17,403^[11]	7,776,645^[11]	40 Gbit/s^[11]	3,191,000 SEK ($478,400, €355,740, £301,224)^[11]
DHS13	18,361^[12]	16,932^[12]		40 Gbit/s
DHW12	20,113	15,485		40 Gbit/s	2,000,000 SEK^[13]
DHS12	15,531	12,446	4,068,303 (WR)^[14]	40 Gbit/s	1,765,000 SEK^[15]	Total streaming views: 12,522,319^[14]
DHW11	20,984 (WR)^[2]	~ 13 010	1.6 million (WR)^[8]	120 Gbit/s (WR)^[2]	1,065,500 SEK^[16]	First event occupying the ice hockey arena. Total streaming views: 6,755,728^[17]
DHS11	~16,000		~700,000	20 Gbit/s^[18]	832,508 SEK^[19]	First event with large outdoors activity area and esports tent.
DHW10	13,608 (WR)^[20]	12 757	~200,000	20 Gbit/s	700,000 SEK^[21]
DHS10	8,000
DHW09	11,500
DHS09	9,000
DHW08	11,000
DHS08	7,500
DHW07	13,000 (WR)^[22]	10 455		40 Gbit/s		First time with 40 Gbit Internet.
DHS07	6,000
DHW06	10,638 (WR)^[4]	8 531				New World Record
DHS06	5,000
DHW05	7,538					This was the 10th anniversary event.
DHS05	5,000
DHW04	5,272 (WR)	5 852				First Official World Record.
DHS04	4,500
DHW03	5,000
DHS03	4,000
DHW02	5,000
DHS02	3,000
DreamHack 01	5,000					First event in Jönköping.
DreamHack 00	3,000
DreamHack 99	3,000
DreamHack 98	1,800
DreamHack 97	750 (SR)					First event in Borlänge. Swedish record in participants.
DreamHack 96	120
DreamHack 95	80	80
DreamHack 94	40	40				First event in Malung

Winter 2010

Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

	Player name	Team	Player name	Team	Player name	Team

Starcraft II	Santeri "Naama" Lahtinen	mousesports	Grzegorz "MaNa" Komincz	mousesports	Arvin Brian "DXD" De Vera	Fnatic
Counter-Strike	players unknown	Natus Vincere	players unknown	mortal Teamwork	players unknown	SK Gaming

Summer 2011

	Player name	Team	Player name	Team	Player name	Team

Counter-Strike	players unknown	SK Gaming	players unknown	mortal Teamwork	players unknown	Natus Vincere
Starcraft II	Chris "HuK" Loranger	Team Liquid	Jae Ho "Moon" Jang	WeMade FOX	Choi "Bomber" Ji Seong	StarTale
Quake Live	Alexey "Cypher" Yanushevsky	players unknown	Shane "rapha" Hendrixson	SK Gaming	Anton "Cooller" Singov	mousesports

Winter 2011

	Player name	Team	Player name	Team	Player name	Team

Counter-Strike	players unknown	Fnatic	players unknown	Lions	players unknown	Natus Vincere
Starcraft II	Song "HerO" Hyeon Deok	Team Liquid	Lee "PuMa" Ho Joon	Evil Geniuses	Joseph "Ret" de Kroon Silviu "NightEnD" Lazar	Team Liquid Fnatic
Quake Live	Alexey "Cypher" Yanushevsky	players unknown	Shane "rapha" Hendrixson	SK Gaming	Maciej "av3k" Krzykowski	players unknown
Heroes of Newerth	players unknown	Fnatic	players unknown	Frenetic Array	players unknown	Lions
League of Legends	players unknown	Fnatic	players unknown	Team against All authority	players unknown	Team SoloMid

Summer 2012

	Player name	Team	Player name	Team	Player name	Team

League of Legends^[23]	players unknown	Counter Logic Gaming Europe	players unknown	Moscow Five	players unknown	Curse Gaming Europe
Quake Live^[24]	Shane "rapha" Hendrixson	SK Gaming	Alexey "cypher" Yanushevesky	Serious Gaming	Tim "DaHanG" Fogarty	Evil Geniuses
Counter-Strike 1.6^[25]	Richard "Xizt" Landström Rasmus "Gux" Ståhl Michael "Friis" Jørgensen Andreas "MODDII" Frid Finn "karrigan" Andersen	FnaticRC	Daniil "Zeus" Teslenko Sergey "starix" Ischuk Arseniy "ceh9" Trynozhenko Yegor "markeloff" Markelov Ioann "Edward" Sukhariev	Natus Vincere	Jarosław "pasha" Jarząbkowski Filip "NEo" Kubski Wiktor "TaZ" Wojtas Jakub "kuben" Gurczyński Mariusz "Loord" Cybulski	ESC Gaming
StarCraft II^[26]	Grzegorz "MaNa" Komincz	mousesports	Dmytro "DIMAGA" Filipchuk	mortal Teamwork	Igor "fraer" Turchin Ilyes "Stephano" Satouri	RoX.KiS Millenium
Dota 2^[27]	Troels "syndereN" Nielsen Titouan "Sockshka" Merloz Thibault "Funzii" Calonne Sébastien "7ckngMad" Debs Rene "Kebap" Werner	mortal Teamwork	Clement "Puppey” Ivanov Dmitriy "LighTofHeaveN” Kupriyanov Aleksander "XBOCT” Dashkevich Danil "Dendi” Ishutin Sergey "ARS-ART” Revin	Natus Vincere	players unknown	players unknown
Heroes of Newerth^[28]	Kai "H4nn1" Hanbueckers Adrian "Era" Kryeziu Johan "N0tail" Sundstein Jascha "NoVa_" Markuse Tal "Fly" Aizik	FnaticRC	Trent “sLiCKz” Tucker Kieton "BoBo_" Beilby Quinn "Leonblack`" Wagner Seb "Shinkz" Torra JunLiong "dabeliuteef" Loh	TT eSPORTS	players unknown	players unknown
Battlefield 3^[29]	Tom "Morte" Kerbusch Erik "2Easy" van Hoorn Sergi "Winghaven" Torras Andrey "Unfixed" Leonov Hendrik "vallutaja" Kinks	Epsilon	players unknown	EYEBALLERS	players unknown	Xapso
Bloodline Champions (unofficial)^[30]	Mr2 Viktory Dandido	MrDandiktory	players unknown	Razer.MiF	players unknown	players unknown

Winter 2012

League of Legends

Place	Team^[31]	Roster
1st	Fnatic	Paul "sOAZ" Boyer Lauri "CyanideFI" Happonen Enrique "xPeke" Cedeño Martin "Rekkles" Larsson Christopher "nRated" Seitz
2nd	Counter Logic Gaming Europe	Mike "Wickd" Petersen Stephen "Snoopeh" Ellis Henrik "Froggen" Hansen Peter "Yellowpete" Wüppen Mitch "Krepo" Voorspoels
3-4th	Copenhagen Wolves	Dan "Godbro" Van Vo Dennis "Svenskeren" Johnsen Søren "XL Bjergsen" Bjerg Kasper "TheTess" Poulsen Christian "XL Winner" Andersen
3-4th	Sju Sjösjuka Sjömän	Alexander "Jree" Bergström Markus "Kottenx" Tingvall Jesper "Jwaow" Strandgren Niklas "kestrel" Lindström Sebastian "Tsibastian" Arvidsson

Heroes of Newerth

Place	Team^[32]	Roster
1st	Trademark eSports	Mynuts noobG Limmp zai' Fittske
2nd	unknown
3rd	unknown
4th	unknown

Quake Live

Place	Player^[24]	Team/sponsor
1st	Sergey "evil" Orekhov	102.
2nd	Shane "rapha" Hendrixson	SK Gaming
3rd	Alexey "cypher" Yanushevesky	Serious Gaming

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Place	Team^[33]	Roster
1st	Ninjas in Pyjamas	Patrik "f0rest" Lindberg Christopher "GeT_RiGhT" Alesund Richard "Xizt" Landstrӧm Robin "Fifflaren" Johansson Adam "friberg" Friberg
2nd	VeryGames	Nathan "NBK" Schmitt Kenny "kennyS" Schrub Edouard "SmithZz" Dubourdeaux Cédric "RpK" Guipouy Kevin "Ex6TenZ" Droolans
3-4th	Lemondogs	André "Berg" Kjellberg Simon "twist" Eliasson Christian "Spitfire" Schiölde cyph Patrick "Zajp" Knutsen
3-4th	mousesports	Daniel "RE1EASE" Mullan Lewis "Hughsy" Hughes Sam "RattlesnK" Gawn James "Mx" Smale Pete "pt" Wright

StarCraft II

Place	Player^[34]	Team
1st	Song "HerO" Hyeon Deok	Team Liquid
2nd	Yun "TaeJa" Young Seo	Team Liquid
3-4th	XMG	Philipp "monchi" Simon
3-4th	Artur "Nerchio" Bloch	Team Acer

Battlefield 3

Place	Team^[35]	Roster
1st	Epsilon eSports	players unknown
2nd	wallberg	players unknown
3-4th	Eyeballers	players unknown
3-4th	Team Rock	players unknown

Dota 2

Place	Team^[36]	Roster
1st	NoTideHunter	Jonathan "Loda" Berg Gustav "s4" Magnusson Henrik "AdmiralBulldog" Ahnberg Joakim "Akke" Akterhall Jacky "EternaLEnVy" Mao
2nd	Evil Geniuses	Clinton "Fear" Loomis Jimmy "DeMoN" Ho Jacob "Maelk" Toft-Anderson Jio "Jeyo" Madayag Robert "bdiz" Tinnes
3-4th	Team Empire	Titouan "Socksha" Merloz Roman "Scandal" Sadotenkov Gleb "Funn1k" Lipatnikov Artur "Goblak" Kostenko Airat "Silent" Gaziev
3-4th	Fnatic	Adrian "Era" Kryeziu Kai "H4nn1" Hanbueckers Kalle "Trixi" Saarinen Johan "N0tail" Sundstein Tal "Fly" Aizik

Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition

Place	Player^[37]	Sponsor/team
1st	Seon "Infiltration" Woo Lee	Western Wolves.Mad Catz
2nd	Ryan Hart	Western Wolves.Mad Catz
3rd	Momi	LLL
4th	F-Word
5th	Yagami	DRz
5th	Skatan Milla	n/a