Latest Blog

In its journey to the mainstream, eSports has just passed another important milestone.

Sky will broadcast eSports for the first time ever with a special programme airing tonight.

The UK TV service plans to showcase highlights from the Intel Extreme Masters, a five-day video gaming tournament at the Spodek Arena in Katowice.

And if you doubt the tournament’s credibility, note that the IEM is attended by 100,000 fans, with a prize pool of $500,000 at stake.

A total 12 teams from all of the world battle it out live, playing games like League of Legends, StarCraft II:Legacy of the Void, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

Winners collect an impressive $100,000 in prize money, which makes this a lucrative venture for the pro gamers involved.

The highlights of the World Championship will air on Sky 2 (channel 129) at 22:00 (GMT) tonight.

The Intel Extreme Masters – sanctioned by the Electronic Sports League – just closed its tenth season.

The competition has already taken place, so Sky’s programme will only be recapping events that took place over this weekend.

Have you ever watched eSports? Let us know in the comments.

As reported by eSports Insider, the partnership will see the two companies host six events, five qualifiers and the final, in various venues owned by the casino giant. These will be one-day ‘turn up and play’ tournaments, where the competitors just need to pay the entrance fee to get involved. The qualifiers are set to be held over July and August, from which the winning teams will head to the final at the Grosvenor Coventry later this year. Each qualifier will have £1,000 on offer, before the final hands out £5,000 in prizes. Due to the nature of the venues themselves, these will all be 18+ tournaments.

Jon Winkle, epic.LAN Managing Director commented: “epic.LAN has always provided community-level tournaments for esports and recognizes that some of the barriers to taking part in esports for new teams are the costs of entry and transport. That’s why we’re really looking forward to delivering this new tournament series with the team from Grosvenor Casinos so we can bring esports straight to the community and give more people opportunities to get involved.”

Callum Scott, Events & Entertainment Project Manager at Rank Group added: “We are very excited about working with epic.LAN. Having played for 10 years, I know how hard it can be to get some much-needed LAN experience. We wanted to work with epic.LAN to offer tournaments outside of London, bringing it to the players and helping grow to our UK talent. It’s all about building a starting point for our future world-class teams!”