French LAN organization LanAlliance have clarified their position relating to the new ESWC competition which is upcoming in 2010. ESWC has always famously held competitions within France to feed players and teams into its World Cup event. It seems LanAlliance will not be partnering or working with this new ESWC due to the fact their own tournaments qualify teams and players for an event called the "Masters Français du Jeu Vidéo".

In the PDF released on their website (in French) LanAlliance explains that it has in the past supported ESWC by offering sports arenas for qualification and staff with knowledge and resources for those. In July of 2009 their Masters event was born to fill the void left by ESWC in France.

As soon as the ESWC and France Cup trademarks were purchased by DIP representatives of both parties met to discuss a convergence of the Masters and ESWC so as to offer a coherent circuit for the French community. These talks were unsuccessful at engineering any kind of collaboration. The Masters had already had time and effort invested into them to build a national final where a champion could be decided, which is a similar setup to ESWC's circuit so a collaboration would have meant abandoning the Masters national final.

The PDF also mentions that DreamHack will be the first international competition organised by the Masters and that similar things are being discussed with GameGune and WCG. No LanAlliance event will lead to any points for ESWC placement. The points distribution of these events will lead to the national final of the Masters. The national final will have international bearings as the Masters will give access to DreamHack and other international competitions, pending discussions.

This information comes from translation of the PDF from French so if there are any inaccuracies they can be put down to that rather than any wilful misinterpretation of the document.

Source: LanAlliance