ESP Gaming, an Esports content creation company, is looking to launch an elimination style televised competition centered around Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds.
ESP plans to kick off this new event with an invitational tournament that holds $100,000 in pools.
This event will be part of ESP Gaming’s new attempt to launch a series of eSports events under the umbrella of “World Showdown of Esports Tournaments” (WSOE). These tournaments will be similar in style to a karate match or UFC match, pitting multiple teams against one another and showcasing specific elements of a team, player, or game to enhance the viewing experience. According to a report from eSports Observer, the first events in this series will take place in Fall of 2018 at the PokerGo Studio at ARIA Resort & Casino in Las Vegas.
When asked about the events, ESP Gaming president Jeff Liboon had this to say:
“ESP Gaming is bringing a new type of esports tournament to the gaming community that ensures every single match is a must-see event featuring top competitors in a drama-filled showdown. The WSOE will highlight the most compelling narratives in competitive gaming driven by the very essence of what makes traditional sports so popular, the players. The WSOE will represent what gamers really love about esports with the intensity turned up to the max.”
The PUBG event will take place before these first events, booting up just a few short days from now on July 14th and running until July 15th. The tournament will feature players from popular eSports teams Envy, Vitality, and even OpTic Gaming.
To help sell the event’s hype and personality, ESP Gaming have hired veteran Esports announcer Richard Lewis to be present during the invitational competition.
The eSports community has never seen an umbrella of games being joined under one umbrella like ESP gaming is trying to do. Essentially, if this program is successful, ESP Gaming looks to become something akin to the ESPN of eSports competitions.
In addition, this “tournament” will not run on traditional tournament-style rules, and will instead put pro teams directly up against other pro teams in an attempt to purposefully manufacture high-stress and high-stakes matches without going through a whole bracket and facing lots of random odds to see if those high-stress matches ever come to pass. This has a few advantages in that its a good way to manufacture hype and excitement for an event, but also disallows any previously unknown players from rising to fame, which can often be just as interesting as two well-known pros facing off on the main stage.
Very soon, the numbers will show how successful this kind of effort ends up being for ESP gaming. considering these card-style matchups are easier to set up than traditional bracket tournaments, if these events garner the same amount of viewers as regular tournaments, they could end up happening more and more frequently in the future.
Featured Image Via Flickr / 山姆 費雪
Ben N
July 13, 2018 at 7:24 pm
PubG has been struggling to battle against Fortnite, but this tournament might bring up its popularity. If it can garner a strong media attention, then the amount of players might see an increase.