Thanks for speaking with us Angel.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the GotFrag community.

The big question on everyone's mind what's in store for next year? The teaser page for the 2007 CPL World Tour is out; can you fill us in on some of the details? Will this world tour be similar to the 2005 Painkiller World Tour or 2006's World Season?

The image at www.cplworldtour.com is not meant as a teaser, but as a visual representation of the new dawn that is rising at CPL. 2006 was a fantastic year of transformation for CPL. We established new sponsorships with AMD, ATI, Pizza Hut and others, we strengthened our interactions with our international partners, we allied with companies like SCI, GameRail and Directron, and above all we did a lot of community listening.

We were able to re-establish our role in esports; and with the help of our sponsors and partners introduced some new ideas to the community of gamers. From the mere food basics like special Pizza Hut discounts for gamers (www.thecpl.com/pizzahut/), to the more techno fetish stuff like CPL PlayLinc (http://cpl.playlinc.com/) and the soon to be launched nationwide CAL servers on GameRail's dedicated network, using our new Anti-Cheat System or ACS (http://www.caleague.com/acs/).

The CPL Word Tour 2007 will not be a mere copy of our previous world tour. Lots of changes under the hood should lead to better event implementation, and exciting finals. Unfortunately beyond the fact that the World Tour will be divided into: national qualifiers, continental stops and world grand finals, there's not much more we want to say at this time.

Will Quake 3 be the only game for the 07 World Tour? Will CS be featured and if so what version will be used (if source is being used, why)? Are you considering other titles that have a global following like Warcraft 3 or Call of Duty 2?

If you take a close look at our websites you may realize that there's one common thread uniting them all? simplicity. It's a philosophical principle at CPL, and we believe that this minimalist Zen-like quality enhances our organization. Therefore in that same spirit of simplicity we plan to focus the 2007 World Tour on one game. The selected game will be announced at the Championship Finals next month.

Will your stops on the World Tour run in a similar fashion to the 2005 World Tour? Will it have that same feel or will the CPL have a much larger brand presence (in effect making each event a mini CPL)?

The World Tour 2007 stops and qualifiers will have a very strong CPL brand presence, the strongest ever. We believe we have cracked the code on how to make this happen efficiently. Our ultimate goal is to homogenize the CPL experience across different global events. The branding and presence of our leading global sponsors will also be very ubiquitous and the ancillary branding opportunities we are offering in 2007 is unlike anything that has been done before, so the events should be in all respects more like CPL events.

How has the increased competition in the North American market affected CPL and CAL?

It's been interesting to watch all of these new companies rushing into esports for the past few years. The only challenge I see is that esports is still in its gestation period and the industry is relatively small. Therefore, an increasing number of esport organizations seeking more dollars from basically the same companies could end up hurting esports.

One of the things that I like about competition is that it provides us with numerous opportunities to watch others experiment with new concepts and gauge their efficacy without engaging our own resources. Also as other organizations are driven to beat CPL and CAL, we also drive ourselves to beat our own previous efforts, to improve on our mistakes and to formulate new concept. At its very essence competition cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

In hindsight was partnering with WSVG for your summer event a good idea? The Intel Summer Championship had a very similar feel to past CPL events, has there been a lot of brand confusion because of this?

We are pleased with the decision we made in reference to the summer event, and any brand confusion that may have taken place before or during the event has vanished and most gamers now realize that CPL remains independent and distinct. We still have a pending matter with WSVG and once we address it, our business with them should be completed.