Over the course of the tournament’s eight iterations, Alex Jebailey built a massive brand around Orlando-based fighting game tournament series CEO. After its humble beginnings in 2010, the series grew rapidly in all areas. More entrants and more games meant the event needed more and more space to keep running.
As a result of this, Jebailey announced after CEO 2017 that the event, despite the ‘O’ in the name standing for ‘Orlando,’ would be moving to Daytona for 2018 as the tournament required more space than could be acquired in Orlando.
CEO was awesome, probably best one yet. Daytona Beach….not so much. City and its people are pretty sus tbh 😒
If only we could have the CEO 2018 venue/experience but hosted in the city of Orlando…
Would be the greatest event in the South of all time imo
— hungrybox (@LiquidHbox) July 2, 2018
Whether they were there for Street Fighter V, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, Dragon Ball FighterZ, Tekken 7, or any other number of popular fighting games, almost every attendee enjoyed the tournament. However, most people’s experience with the city of Daytona was less than stellar.
No singular factor was the reason that people didn’t enjoy the city, but apparently panhandling was a problem for more than a few attendees. Multiple people reported that racist comments and actions by Daytona residents also hurt the experience.
Such as bigger police presence, parked police cars on corners around the venue,strip and more. I'll be remaining directly in contact with them as well as we get closer to the event next year and will stay on top of it.
— Alex Jebailey (@Jebailey) July 18, 2018
In a six-tweet-long thread, Jebailey explained that he’s spoken with the Daytona Beach Police Department about the problems tournament-goers experienced between June 28 and July 1 this year. They assured him that for CEO 2019, they will heavily increase their presence in the streets near and around the venue to help discourage any unseemly behavior.
Jebailey also made sure to point out that the city of Daytona Beach will be passing panhandling ordinances in order to help restore the city to the tourism hot spot that it’s used to being.
This is a great step forwards and just another reason why Jebailey is a great figurehead among the FGC. Any cities or communities with issues like these should certainly try and contact the city and see if similar steps can be taken.
