Tournament:CEO

Community Effort Orlando Series
Info
Founded	2010
Region	United States
Format	Double elimination
winners	Armada (2014)  Leffen (2015)  Hungrybox (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019)  Plup (2022, 2023)  Wizzrobe (2024)
winners	ZeRo (2014)
winners	ZeRo (2015, 2017)  ANTi (2016)  MkLeo (2018)
winners	MkLeo (2019)  Kola (2021, 2024)  Sonix (2022)  Dabuz (2023)
Most successful player(s)	Hungrybox (4 wins)
Staff
Organizer(s)	Jebailey
Website(s)	http://ceogaming.org/

The Community Effort Orlando series, or simply CEO, is an annual fighting game tournament series typically held annually in Florida by Alex Jebailey and CEO Gaming. The series is widely recognized as one of the premier events for fighting games and has held events for every Smash title at least once.

History

The tournament series began in 2010 in Orlando, with Super Smash Bros. Melee and Super Smash Bros. Brawl as side events. The two games were dropped after CEO 2011, but Melee later returned alongside Project M on the official game lineup at CEO 2014, which also marked the first entry in the series to be a Smash major. Between 2014 and 2022, every tournament in the main CEO series had at least one event that reached major status, with some going as far as to reach supermajor status.

A notable change in the series was its location switch from Orlando to Daytona Beach in 2018 after Jebailey signed a contract with the Ocean Center. However, this switch prove controversial, as many FGC players chose not to attend CEO due to the perception that Daytona Beach's neighborhood was unfriendly. This likely had an impact on Smash as well, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic: CEO 2022 was the first CEO event since CEO 2015 where the event for the most recent Smash title was not considered a supermajor, while CEO 2023 marked the first CEO event since CEO 2011 where none of the Smash events reached major status. The contract was set to last until 2025, however Jebailey and the venue agreed to end the contract a year early, with CEO 2024 being the last CEO event held in Daytona Beach.

The CEO Dreamland subseries is dedicated entirely to Super Smash Bros., and features all official Smash games as its only main events. So far, two Dreamland events have been held, one in 2017 and one in 2020. However, both events faced financial issues due to low attendance and COVID-19, respectively.

List of tournaments

Main events

Event	Date	Attendance	Games
CEO 2010*	June 5th-6th, 2010	80+
CEO 2011*	June 10th-12th, 2011	60+
CEO 2014	June 27th-29th, 2014	262+
CEO 2015*	June 26th-28th, 2015	512+
CEO 2016	June 24th-26th, 2016	1,488
CEO 2017	June 16th-18th, 2017	866
CEO 2018	June 29th-July 1st, 2018	1,091
CEO 2019	June 28th-30th, 2019	1,493
CEO 2021	December 3rd-5th, 2021	777
CEO 2022*	June 24th-26th, 2022	834
CEO 2023*	June 23rd-25th, 2023	730
CEO 2024	June 28th-30th, 2024	553

*Prior to CEO 2014, all Smash games were side events. In addition, Project M was a side event at CEO 2015 and Smash 64 was a side event at CEO 2022 and 2023.

Dreamland series

Event	Date	Attendance	Games
CEO Dreamland	April 14th-16th, 2017	727
CEO Dreamland 2020	March 13th-15th, 2020	970

Champions

Melee Winners

Year	Event	Player	Tag	Character(s)	Runner-up	Character(s)
2010	CEO 2010*	Juan Debiedma	Hungrybox		Colbol
2011	CEO 2011*	Juan Debiedma	Hungrybox		Linguini
2014	CEO 2014	Adam Lindgren	Armada		Mango
2015	CEO 2015	William Hjelte	Leffen		Armada
2016	CEO 2016	Juan Debiedma	Hungrybox		Mew2King
2017	CEO 2017	Juan Debiedma	Hungrybox		Plup
2018	CEO 2018	Juan Debiedma	Hungrybox		Plup
2019	CEO 2019	Juan Debiedma	Hungrybox		Wizzrobe
2022	CEO 2022	Justin McGrath	Plup		Magi
2023	CEO 2023	Justin McGrath	Plup		Wizzrobe
2024	CEO 2024	Justin Hallett	Wizzrobe		Hungrybox

* Melee was a side event in 2010 and 2011.

Project M Winners

Year	Event	Player	Tag	Character(s)	Runner-up	Character(s)
2014	CEO 2014	Gonzalo Barrios	ZeRo		Wizzrobe
2015	CEO 2015*	Forrest Griffin	MrLz		Jfyst

* Project M was a side event in 2015.

Smash 4 Winners

Year	Event	Player	Tag	Character(s)	Runner-up	Character(s)
2015	CEO 2015	Gonzalo Barrios	ZeRo		Nairo
2016	CEO 2016	Jason Bates	ANTi		Zinoto
2017	CEO 2017	Gonzalo Barrios	ZeRo		MKLeo
2018	CEO 2018	Leonardo Lopez Perez	MkLeo		Tweek

Ultimate Winners

Year	Event	Player	Tag	Character(s)	Runner-up	Character(s)
2019	CEO 2019	Leonardo Lopez Perez	MkLeo		Marss
2021	CEO 2021	Kolawole Aideyan	Kola		Glutonny
2022	CEO 2022	Carlos Pérez	Sonix		Riddles
2023	CEO 2023	Samuel Robert Buzby	Dabuz		Riddles
2024	CEO 2024	Kolawole Aideyan	Kola		Riddles

Smash 64 Winners (side event)

Year	Event	Player	Tag	Character(s)	Runner-up	Character(s)
2022	CEO 2022	Steven Rodriguez	Loto		Crockett
2023	CEO 2023	Ben Kesler	derstuk		Fil

Brawl Winners (side event)

Year	Event	Player	Tag	Character(s)	Runner-up	Character(s)
2010	CEO 2010*	Akilade Akiwumi Daniel Rodriguez — —	RedHalberd  ChuDat  HRNUT  Mero		—	—
2011	CEO 2011	Akilade Akiwumi	RedHalberd		Xaltis

* The top 4 players decided to split.

Trivia

• ESAM is the only Smash player who won a CEO event outside of Smash, having won Divekick in 2014.

External links

• Official website
• Official twitter