Worlds 2013 Location: Vancouver, Canada!
It was just announced at the closing ceremonies of Worlds that next year’s tournament will be hosted in the city of Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada! This is the first time in the history of Pokemon that Worlds will be held outside of the United States. It seems that moving Worlds to an international location will make for more of a “Worlds” tournament, especially since Pokemon is a franchise with countless players across dozens of countries. It should also be noted that Vancouver is the inspiration for LaRousse City in Destiny Deoxys!
From a business perspective, perhaps moving Worlds outside of the United States reflects Pokemon attempting to bring more attention to Worlds and the Champion Series in general. As was announced a while ago, you will be able to download the Worlds 2012 champion teams to Black 2 and White 2 and fight against them in the games’ new “World Tournament” feature. This move by Gamefreak will undoubtedly bring more awareness to the World Championships and competitive Pokemon in general. More fans will want to become involved in organized play, and, of course, will invest more money into the video games and TCG so that they can work their way up to the World Champion title (to becoming a “Pokemon Master,” both in real life and now in the actual video games). This may also be why TPCi decided to stream the TCG to audiences at large this year: it exposes more fans to the card game and to these high-profile Pokemon events, which will get many interested in participating and, naturally, investing into the franchise. Thus, moving Worlds to a new and exotic location will also inspire fans to try harder to reach for Worlds. They will have to participate in the Championship Series, will have to invest money into the franchise to do so, and will hopefully earn that invite that would otherwise be quite expensive!
In a way, the Pokemon franchise has come full circle now: we first had organized play for the TCG, then video game support was added a few years ago, and now the video games are promoting the real-world “Play! Pokemon” tournaments. More than ever, every aspect of the franchise is advertising another aspect of the franchise. And that of course is what continues to make Pokemon so successful.
- 2004: Orlando, Florida
- 2005: San Diego, California
- 2006: Anaheim, California
- 2007: Kona, Hawaii
- 2008: Orlando, Florida
- 2009: San Diego, California
- 2010: Kona, Hawaii
- 2011: San Diego, California
- 2012: Kona, Hawaii
- 2013: Vancouver, Canada