With millions of eyes tuned in to the Fortnite Pro-Am tournament at E3 this week, Epic Games used the spotlight to unveil plans for the Fortnite World Cup, designed to support “community organized events, online events, and major organized competitions all over the world.” Qualifiers will launch later this year, with the first Fortnite World Cup running in early 2019, offering both Solos and Duos competition for the previously-announced $100 million prize pool that would be dedicated to the game’s esports tournaments, split between events at different levels of competition around the world. Meanwhile, Epic Games also served up a peek at the ‘Observer Mode’ on the game that could be leveraged for future esports tournaments.
Anyway, the $3 million Fortnite Pro-Am Tournament, featuring 50 teams that paired streamers with celebrities, saw not only a reported two-mile line to get in (per ESPN), but also scored nearly two million viewers across multiple channels, according to multiple reports, with Twitch alone drawing 1.3 million, including more than 700,000 on the official Fortnite channel.