After the successful premiere of the format in 2023, Ubisoft commissioned GameCatering again in 2024 to host and produce the R6 Central Combine. This time the focus was more firmly on the semi-professional Rainbow Six Siege scene: we designed a tournament system with a robust rulebook plus a website and tournament platform that, over seven weeks – four open qualifier match days followed by group and knockout stages – identified the two best of 142 registered teams. Those two met in an offline final in front of a live audience at XPERION Cologne.
The match days were covered by 19 community streamers in nine languages. We coordinated observers and streamers and provided communication channels and assets for the streams. After the qualifiers, we produced our own shows from a purpose-built studio designed in the style of the game, broadcast on the official Rainbow Six and Ubisoft Twitch channels. Four talents – two hosts/analysts and two casters – brought the studio to life; booking, travel planning, catering and briefing were on us.
For the offline final, the entire studio travelled to Cologne: as the production set for the final show and as a photo backdrop for the roughly 150 visitors on site. Travel had to be arranged at short notice for the talents, both finalist teams and their coaches – hotels in Cologne during Gamescom, plus the arrival and departure of 18 people from eight countries. Ten game stations were equipped with high-performance gaming PCs and monitors so the final ran smoothly and fairly.
On top of that came a trophy in the R6 Central Combine design, goodie bags with merchandise for spectators on site, and a giveaway of a custom-branded gaming PC worth €3,000 among the Twitch viewers – powered by a purpose-built tool that allocated tickets by watch time and drew one of them live during the final.
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