10/11/18: PUBG lines up National PUBG League and the PUBG Europe League

CynopsisESPORTS

It’s Thursday October 11, 2018 and this is your weekly early morning Esports briefing. For additional longer-form esports news plus jobs, a team directory, glossary, calendar and data, check out our new esports hub updated daily: http://cynopsisesports.com.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is taking its pro competition to a new level, announcing the launch of two new pro leagues coming to North America and Europe, in the National PUBG League and the PUBG Europe League, respectively. Both leagues will feature 16 teams and run in three phases, with $1 million on the line in the NA league and a million euros in Europe.

As partner for the National PUBG League, esports network and content producer OGN announced plans to launch in the US that will include the opening of a new arena and studio in Manhattan Beach, CA and a plan to produce live events and other esports content, including the new OGN Super League as well as OGN Super Match invitational competitions in addition to the PUBG deal. The Los Angeles metro-area studio will become the largest on the west coast at 35,000 square feet, with a 500-audience seat and 100 player-seat capacity. Overseeing OGN operations in North America will be DJ Lee, the newly appointed CEO of CJ ENM America. The National PUBG League will serve as a live, weekly competition centered around one of the battle royale titles, initially available to be streamed on OGN’s Twitch channel.

PUBG Corporation and StarLadder are partnering for the professional league for the PUBG Europe League. Play begins in January, with PUBG Europe League serving as part of a global competitive system, in which top-performing teams from PEL will have a chance to qualify for an international event at the end of the season. The best teams from each region will compete against one another to decide the season’s champion. PUBG Corp. will provide housing and travel support to the teams participating and continue supporting the teams with revenue share of the league.

COMPETITION and VENUES

With 20 teams lined up for season two, Overwatch League detailed the format for the 2019 season with opening play beginning Feb. 14, 2019 and each of the league’s 20 teams now playing 28 matches over four five-week stages at Blizzard Arena Los Angeles. The division winners and the next four top teams regardless of division will qualify for the postseason. Two additional teams will make the playoffs based on the results of a play-in tournament, which will take place immediately after the regular season. To help give teams opportunities to visit their home markets and to keep players fresh, teams will play zero, one or two matches per week. Additionally, there will be longer breaks during the season, including an extended break around the league’s All-Star event, which will take place between Stages 2 and 3. The eight expansion franchises have been assigned to the league’s two existing divisions. Paris, Toronto, Washington D.C. and Atlanta will join the Atlantic Division, while Vancouver, Chengdu, Guangzhou and Hangzhou will join the Pacific Division.

ESP Gaming unveiled its premier plans for the first-ever World Showdown of Esports. The multi-genre esports tournament series will open on Oct. 14-15 with top competitors of Dota 2. The action can be seen live on twitch.tv/WSOE coming out of the PokerGO Studio in Las Vegas. Competing teams, featuring veteran players and rising stars – including compLexity Gaming, Alliance, Team Serenity, J.Storm, The Final Tribe, Happy Guys, ROOONS, and Pain X – will play for $100,000 in cash prizes. WSOE also revealed that ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) will be the official hardware sponsor of the tournament series.

ELEAGUE revealed the players and commentators who will be featured in its upcoming charity live streaming event – Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 x ELEAGUE CODNATION Challenge for Vets– taking place on Saturday at 5p on Twitch. Fans will be able to contribute to the Call of Duty Endowment, a non-profit organization that seeks to help veterans find high-quality careers, directly via the Twitch stream. The event will see a slate of popular current and former professional Call of Duty players – including the complete FaZe Clan roster – band together to form three teams and face off in several Black Ops 4 multiplayer modes, including the Blackout battle royale game, throughout the event. In addition to their analysis and commentary, the casters will play in the exhibition as team captains. ELEAGUE will also feature them in its three-part feature series showcasing the event’s top moments, set to premiere Oct. 26,at11p on TBS.

The English Premier League and Electronic Arts announced a new partnership to launch a UK-based FIFA 19esports league centered on the legendary soccer league. The new entity will be known as the ePremier League and feature 20 teams based off of each of the Premier League clubs, including staple teams Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, and Liverpool. The slate will begin in January of next year with players able to register starting Dec. 3. All of the 20 recognized clubs in the Premier League will host their own live playoffs to select two individuals to represent the club at the event, one for each platform (PS4 and Xbox One).Players will then compete against one another for two months over the course of three rounds: online qualification, live club playoffs, and the ePL Final, which will take place from March 28 in London. The finals of the tournament will also run in primetime on Sky Sports.

Similarly, starting Nov. 5, top football clubs in Denmark will be competing on both the physical and virtual football pitch thanks to a groundbreaking national league, titled eSuperliga. The org will see teams from all Danish Superliga clubs compete in EA Sports FIFA 19 as part of the Official League Qualifying events in the EA SPORTS FIFA 19 Global Series.

Red Bull Conquest revealed plans for the Red Bull Conquest National Finals in Washington, D.C. and running Nov. 16-18 at the Entertainment and Sports Arena. Top regional fighting game champions from 15 U.S. cities and online will face off in one final battle with contenders from Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition, TEKKEN 7, and Guilty Gear Xrd REV2. The fighting game weekend will provide something for competitors and spectators alike, including a way to experience Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition, TEKKEN 7 and Guilty Gear Xrd REV2with special Augmented Reality (AR) activations provided by Artechouse.

Full Sail University opened the blueprints to a new esports arena in support of Armada, the university’s collegiate level varsity esports team, as well as other professional industry esports initiatives. The 11,200+ square foot facility will be the largest esports arena to date on any college or university campus in the United States. Known as “The Fortress,” the arena will host collegiate and professional gaming tournaments, live esports streaming events, and will be used to explore activities including drone programming, possibly drone racing, and more. In addition to the arena, a separate dedicated practice space for Armada will be housed on the 210+ acre campus and equipped with the latest in gaming technology.

Las Vegas will play host to the League of Legends All-Star 2018 this year, locking in on Esports Arena Las Vegas from Dec. 6-8 this year. This year’s event will draw from a pool of around 64 All-Stars including: a pair of pros from each competitive region, as voted by fans; two or three League Partners (streamers, prominent LoL community members, etc.) from each region, selected from the League Partner Program; and four pro player “All-Star Invitees,” chosen by Riot after the conclusion of the fan vote.

INSIGHTS

With League of Legends Worlds kicking off, Stream Hatchet’s cross platform support enables clients to determine both total audience size, and where they are watching. As live streaming continues to grow as the nexus of esports and gaming, it’s important to remember that medium is just as important as media. Here are insights:

The Play-Ins stage of the 2018 LoL World Championships received 23.6M new views from an audience who watched 18.5M hours of content.
Although the YouTube Gaming (YTG) audience was smaller, it was just as engaged: Twitch generated 43% more views than YTG, and only 10% more Hours Watched.
YouTube Gaming is catching up with Twitch: 42% of the Peak CCV (661K) were YTG viewers.

For more information, insights, and analysis, visit: blog.streamhatchet.com.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

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ACTIVATION

TwitchCon 2018 confirmed its lineup of sponsors and esports events ahead of this year’s gathering, which begins on Oct. 26 in San Jose, CA. Overall, more than 140 exhibitors will take part in this year’s festivities, with premier sponsors and activations that include: Kakao Games; Legion, by Lenovo; Level up TwitchCon with Twitch Prime; and theIntel Streamer Zone. On the competitive gaming front, play will include the Broadcaster Royale: Omen Challenge, the Doritos Bowl, the Fortnite Fall Skirmish- Grand Final and Games Done Quick.

Cygames will sponsor Canada Cup 2018, Canada’s staple fighting game tournament event. This year’s event will take place at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Canada, from October 26-28 and feature more than 20 different tournament events, across a 100,000 square feet venue.

Gaming headset brand HyperX inked a two-year deal with soccer pro Dele Alli as its latest gaming ambassador. Alli competes in the English Premier League with the club Tottenham Hotspur, and played for the England national team in the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Despite its focus as a gaming brand, HyperX has signed a number of traditional sports athletesas brand ambassadors. Alli joins NFL player JuJu Smith-Schuster and NBA players Gordon Hayward and De’Aaron Fox.

TEAMS

Global esports organization Gen.G is partnering with NBA Champion Chris Bosh, bringing him onboard as the organization’s Player Management Advisor. Bosh will mentor teams and players, focusing on leadership, teamwork, building great teams, dealing with the pressures of high-profile sports, and more.

Riot reportedly locked in another team for the company’s upcoming franchised European League of Legends Championship Series. According to ESPN, the company has accepted Astralis as a franchise partner, where they will pay just over $12 million for the slot and join other reported organizations that include G2 Esports, Fnatic, Misfits, Schalke 04 Esports and Team Vitality in the league. On Friday, according to the report, Riot notified Splyce and H2K Gaming that their applications for franchise slots had been declined.

FanAI SNAPSHOT

Last week FanAI looked at the general audience cross over for Twitch’s week 1 broadcast of Thursday Night Football and the CS:GO audience. For week 2, Amazon-owned Twitch utilized their native streamer talent to bring even more viewers to TNF through the co-streaming functionality. FanAI investigated the impact that this promotion had on the viewership numbers week-over-week for Thursday Night Football. One of the major partners for this initiative was TimTheTatman, a popular and established Twitch personality; his co-stream singlehandedly expanded the week 2 audience for TNF from 86K to 310K+ unique logged-in viewers. This 260% increase in the audience size demonstrates the massive impact that a single influencer can have on a brand’s broadcast. For brands looking to bring their own content to Twitch this data shows the potential impact of integrating Twitch influencers in their activations.

PLATFORMS

SuperData, which is now a Nielsen company, is launching the SuperData Arena dashboard, described as a breakthrough new media measurement tool developed to provide games publishers, brands and sponsors with in-depth audience metrics and insights across gaming video content and esports platforms and services. The tool “determines the value of top games, industry influencers, popular streaming content, game channels and audiences by tracking a wide range of metrics, such as the number of hours streamed and watched, average concurrent viewers and channel followers” across top streaming games sources.

ELEAGUE saw last Friday’s episode of the CS:GO Premier score a new record as the most-viewed esports program in the history of cable TV. The episode generated an average of nearly 700,000 viewers.

Fnatic unlocked a partnership with social VR company Sansar to launch the Fnatic Meta BUNKR, described as a virtual fan hangout designed to enable deeper community engagement. Free to access on PC and VR, the space provides Fnatic fans all over the world a place to gather and connect, host events and meetups, meet popular players and personalities, and earn rewards and prizes.

Estars announced the launch of a new interactive engagement platform for esports events worldwide, blending elements of competitive gaming with a social gaming platform designed to spur active engagement for the biggest esports competitions around the world. The first product, Estars Outlast, is a free-to-play competition that allows fans to test their knowledge of various esports tournaments and predict the performance of their favorite competitors.

Microsoft unveiled plans for a new cloud gaming project designed to stream console and PC games across multiple devices. The platform is currently being called Project xCloud and the service will look to use “state-of-the-art global game-streaming technology” to allow players to continue gaming on any device they choose to use, according to the official Microsoft blog.

INDUSTRY

Epic Games added security and player management company Kamu to its portfolio. Kamu is based in Helsinki and offers developers and publishers, among other services, game security, game telemetry and anti-cheat technology that is used by more 100 million PC players globally.

Almost five years since the debut of PlayStation 4. Sony now confirms that it is developing a new generation of the console. “At this point, what I can say is it’s necessary to have a next-generation hardware,” said Kenichiro Yoshida, Sony’s president and CEO, in an interview with the Financial Times.

Speaking of PlayStation, PlayStation Network announced that users will finally be able to change their old PSN IDs beginning in early 2019. Swapping names will initially be free for the first change and then other changes will cost users $10 (or $5 if you’re a PlayStation Plus member). Beta testing for the service will launch soon.

American media groupAdvance Publicationsacquired a majority ownership of research and analytics firm Newzoo. As part of the investment, Advance will reportedly make a “significant” capital investment into the firm.

ROSTER MOVES

Square Enix named John Heinecke as its new chief marketing officer. Heinecke will be in charge of the company’s overall marketing across both Square Enix America and Square Enix Europe. He joins the company following 12 years at Blizzard Entertainment, where he recently served as VP of global publishing for Overwatch.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

The 2018 Cynopsis TV Awards

The TV Awards recognizes outstanding achievement across teams, platforms, and overall merit. Winning a Cynopsis TV Award is acknowledgement from your peers – and from the leading B2B digital publication in our industry – that your work has risen to the top in entertaining and enriching a broad audience. New categories include: Awards Show, Comedy Special, Companion Series/After-Show, Financial Series, Network Rebrand and more (view all categories here ).

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ON THIS DAY in 2011: Microsoft releases Forza Motorsport 4.

Trivia: Actor John DiMaggio, who has voiced a slew of game characters include Marcus Fenix from the Gears of War franchise, recently wrapped up his role as Jake the Dog in which animated series? (Email [email protected] with your answer and be sure to include your name, company and city.)

Answer to Our Last Sports Trivia Question: Agent 47 is the main character in which video game franchise? Answer: Hitman. Kudos: Chris Davies-Virgin/London; Danny Araque/NY; Andy Pittman-TAMU/College Station; Patrick Dyer-MVP Interactive/LA; Hayne Park-Twitch/San Francisco; Jaymz Wooden-Bottelsen American Dart Lines/Santa Maria; David Ciemny-Redrock/LA

Later — Chris

Chris Pursell @VegasandVine
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