UK LAN provider Epic.LAN has hired an additional hall for its next event, Epic 43, to allow more guests to attend than ever before.
The main Epic.LAN event takes place three times per year at Kettering Leisure Village, featuring various esports tournaments and other community activities like a pub quiz and parties. It’s complemented by supplementary events like the more casual-focused Epic.Lux and tabletop weekenders.
Epic.LAN usually takes place in a main arena hall, and Epic 43 – taking place October 24th to 27th 2024 – will now also open up the venue’s Fair Isle hall.
This will create more space for guests – around 200 more than Epic 41 – to bring their PCs and play together.
Epic.LAN MD Jon Winkle told Esports News UK that Epic 41 had 717 people on site overall, while the most recent event, Epic 42, was a smaller summer event in a different part of the venue that can’t really be compared to Epic 43.
There are up to 1,000 participants, visitors and spectators expected over the course of the Epic 43 weekend.
Epic.LAN said in this update on its website: “We sold out our discount allocation [for Epic 43] in just five days without really shouting about it, and we’ve done the same number of tickets again in the past few weeks.
“We’ve decided it’s time to expand Epic 43 and kick in our plans to open up the Fair Isle hall alongside the arena to make Epic 43 our biggest event ever.”
Epic.LAN
“We are recommending (not forcing) Fair Isle for casual players and single player esports titles and similarly recommending Arena for FPS-based esports. But you can still choose either, we’re not going to be moving people away from their chosen areas. The only time we’d do this is if we come to a defrag situation and a group cannot fit in either of the rooms together.”
The news comes after Epic 42 took place in July – you can read our Epic 42 esports winners roundup here, with Verdant planting 200+ trees after winning the CS2 LAN.
The LAN event is well-known in the UK Counter-Strike community, and is often lovingly referred to as ‘IEM Kettering’ (in reference to the big Intel Extreme Masters events), especially given the fact that Intel regularly sponsors Epic.LAN.
Tickets and more information on Epic 43 can be found here.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
