The road to bringing top level organised play to Europe has been a long and winding one. The Calling Krakow event represents our sixth attempt to bring a Calling event to Europe, counting both those events that you all saw announced, and several more that you didn't, as we have tried to duck and weave around lockdown restrictions.
However, having finally managed to secure a venue, the world faces more turbulence, with Poland finding itself at the front line of providing support to the millions of refugees fleeing Ukraine. The situation has put a lot of stress on the country, but generosity that the Polish community has shown has been huge, and it has led us to ask how we can give some support to help as Poland copes with the influx of Ukrainian refugees.
Therefore, today we are making an announcement in regard to the Calling Krakow. Firstly, we have decided to donate all proceeds from all ticket sales for the event to Polska Akcja Humanitarna (Polish Humanitarian Action). PAH has been providing support to refugees under very trying circumstances, including food and other forms of support to people who had to leave their homes. As a studio, we feel that it's the right thing that if our community is going to be in Poland in April that we look to provide support to the local community in dealing with this incredibly difficult situation.
Secondly, while tickets to the event have continued to sell, there was a clear drop-off in sales as the situation in Ukraine escalated, and as a result we are anticipating that the Calling Krakow is going to be smaller than what we were expecting and hoping it would be. As a result of this, however, we are expecting to have ticket packages to the event left over, including playmats and promos. For a lot of European players, Krakow would have represented their only chance to access these materials, and we still want these to be available to fans and to see them out on tables across the continent. That is why, in the week before the event, we will be making these promos available for purchase by our European fans, with the proceeds from the sale again going to PAH. These promo bundles will be available from the afternoon of Monday 11 April CET at the tournamentcenter website.
We are working hard with tournamentcenter to ensure that Krakow is a great event, and if you're not going to be there then we have a great coverage lineup for the weekend too. We look forward to welcoming you to Krakow, and we hope that this small gesture can help PAH to continue their great work.