Facebook & ESL, which signed an exclusivity streaming agreement a week ago, has left the fans disappointed. The deal featured ESL One and Pro League events to be streamed not traditionally on Twitch but Facebook.
After the deal went through, ESL One Genting was the first event. The tournament is the first Dota event of 2018 that features all of the top teams in the world and many fans were expected to tune into the event.
I’m not happy about it, but I feel obligated to point out that broadcast rights are THE largest source of economic rents for nearly EVERY professional or major competitive sports league around the world. Esports is not different just “because we’re esports”.
However, the first day of the competition and the Facebook live stream seemed to peak around the 7,000 viewers mark, with that number shrinking to around 2,000 for large parts of the broadcast. Unanticipated to the prediction of the management which was at a loss of viewership of 10-15%, the numbers dropped by more than 85% in the first run.
On a lighter note, the Reddit subsection moderators of DotA 2 have already started making fun of the decision. The section which shows ‘online viewers’ was renamed to ‘Facebook viewers.’
Although there are factors reflecting the drop in viewership, it is still considerably low.
Group stage matches
Different timezone
Ongoing ELEAGUE Boston Major
Other than the factors which could have dropped the numbers, the fans also complained about technical issues with the stream and the Facebook platform.
The visual quality of the stream was also not perfect while watching it on the mobile platforms. The only feasible way to watch on iOS devices is via the official Facebook app, which requires a Facebook account. An honest Reddit thread lists the serious problems of the deal.
Nazara Games, which entered into the esports fraternity last year with ₹ 136 crore investment announcement has executed a deal with Nodwin Gaming. The mobile game production giant, which announced their investment plans last year to support their esports endeavors have now gone a step ahead and acquired a majority stake in Nodwin Gaming.
Nodwin, which is responsible for introducing international brands in India such as ESL, ESWC, was formed by an equal share partnership by Gautam Virk and Akshat Rathee & Jetsynthesis Pvt. Ltd., a marketing firm holding multiple digital properties.
EY acted as the exclusive financial advisor to the transaction. Nazara Technologies Ltd., is also preparing for initial public offering in the upcoming quarters as per the sources.
Nazara, with its majority investment in NODWIN, is furthering its commitment of developing the esports ecosystem to enable competitive online & offline gaming, create localized leagues and cups and boost esports as spectator sports in India.
The approach includes localized content creation around global events (ESL One, ESL Pro League, Intel Extreme Masters, The International by Valve, etc) and creating local events by bringing in sponsors. This
will give a massive boost to the creation of world-class esports athletes and players emerging from the Indian ecosystem.
Sandeep Singhal, MD, Westbridge Capital quoted “Nazara and Nodwin coming together is a great
win-win for the shareholders of both the companies. We are delighted at the possibility of this
alliance.”
According to Manish Agarwal, CEO, Nazara Technologies, “Through this acquisition we aim to provide Indian esports enthusiasts a robust player and community orientated esports ecosystem, in which players can thrive, improve their skills and become top competitors at an international level.
According to, NODWIN Gaming, CEO and Managing Director, Akshat Rathee, “esports is one of the fastest growing sports worldwide. This acquisition by Nazara Games adds to the credibility of NODWIN and opens up a wide vista of opportunities for Indian esports players to build careers domestically and Internationally. It strengthens our ability to provide our key stakeholders better experiences and bigger opportunities to engage with our community.”
Rajan Navani, Vice Chairman, and Managing Director, Jetsynthesys Pvt Ltd., added “Having worked closely with Akshat Rathee and Gautam Virk to build Nodwin Gaming to this level, we are pleased and excited about the future opportunity for all of us, that opens up with Nazara’s participation to help establish Nodwin as the clear leader in e-sports over the longer term.”
We regret an earlier story mentioned Signify’s investor as Nazara instead of Route Mobiles. It has now been rectified.
Mousesports left their fans disappointed after failing to secure three among fifteen rounds. The match for round four of ELEAGUE Major Boston 2018 started on a rather dominant note for the Mousesports side.
Quantum Bellator Fire (QBF) had a rough first half on Train, the winner of which would qualify for Major and advance to playoffs. On the CT side, Mousesports took charge of the pistol round, thus, extended their lead to a quality 8-1.
Quantum Bellator Fire qualifies for the playoffs
The Russian side though could only manage to get another round on board when the game ended in the first half as 13-2. The landslide victory for QBF marks a certain example for everyone vouching for “impossible comebacks.”
QBF proved everyone wrong. They took the charge of the second half after winning the first two round. They were able to break the economy of the mousesports side by limiting them only a round in the second half. Mousesports, went off the road after the QBF had eight round on board. Unbelievably for the most, the map ended on a massive upset.
QBF beat Mousesports 16-14 with a remarkable comeback. One of the best comebacks in a Valve Major!
Kicking off from February 8th – 11th, Beyond The Summit will be hosting the second installment of the extremely popular cs_summit Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament with prize pool of $150,000.
The first slot was decided in the online LOOT.BET Cup 2 tournament which included teams like HellRaisers, Heroic, and Mousesports. Mousesports became the first team to register a spot in the event after winning the online LOOT.BET Cup 2 with NAVI`S Oleksandr ‘s1mple’ Kostyliev playing as a stand-in.
It is clear that the event would feature the majority of invited teams, with qualifiers like the LOOT.BET Cup being the exception.
On January 1st the organizers of the cs_summit events, revealed the first three invited teams that will be in attending the tournament alongwith Mousesports. These include the reigning cs_summit champions, SK Gaming, who defeated Gambit in the Grand Final back in April of 2017, Along with Cloud9 & North.
On January 17th, Beyond The Summit announced that “Mousesports decided to step back from this tournamnet due to personal reasons, so they have decided to replace Heroic for Mousesports”.
They also announced the final team list for CS_SUMMIT 2 which includes OpTic Gaming and NiP which is missing from the ongoing ELEAGUE Boston Majorso it’s quite exiting for their fans to see them back in action!
ESL has announced a massive prize pool for the forthcoming season of ESL India Premiership 2018. The event will run for nine months, which will have three subsections, Starters, Challengers & Masters. The event will also be televised on DSPORT, alongside digital streams.
Entering the third year, ESL India Premiership’s prize pool has significantly surged to INR 1,00,00,000 (One Crore Rupee). The games are settled to CS:GO, DotA II and Clash Royale.
The announcement was conducted at India Gaming Show 2018.
As expected, ESL India has divided the events into three section. Summer Season will run from April to June, hosted in Mumbai, whereas Fall Season will continue from July to September, venue of which is still to be publicly announced.
Summer Season, April to June – Mumbai
Fall Season, July to September – TBA
Winter Season, November to January 2019 – IGS 2019, likely Bangalore
The Winter Season, which is also known as Masters, the finale of the year is scheduled from November 2018 to January 2019, the venue has been decided and the event will take place along with India Gaming Show 2019 and not usual ComicCon, for this year.
On a lighter note, the hosts, Aditya Shah and Vageesh Bhan also took jibe on the ongoing Ucypher league, which claims to be India’s first multi-platform esports tournament.
In the year 2018, the title of ESL India Premiership – Winters was won by Entity Gaming. The teams in India are all equipped to become a part of this One Crore league.
The organizers at ELEAGUE has revealed the schedule for the second round of Boston Major’s Legends. The winners of the first round will take on the winners, whereas, vice-versa on the losing side.
The first round of the New Legends had unexpected results. Mousesports beat Astralis dominantly with 16-2 as the scoreline. Whereas, Cloud9 was put down by G2 at 16-8. VP also had a disappointing result of 3-16 versus Quantum Bellator Fire.
ELEAGUE Boston Major 2018 – New Legends
The finale was the most exciting game on Friday, as SK Gaming barely defeated Space Soldiers 16-13 on Mirage to end the day on a high note for the Legend teams.
QBF vs Gambit
Space Soldiers vs Cloud9
FaZe vs Vega Squadron
G2 vs Liquid
SK vs mousesports
Virtus.pro vs fnatic
BIG vs Natus Vincere
Astralis vs North
The second day of action at the New Legends stage of the $1 million Major begins at 08:30 PM IST tonight.
In the first three weeks of Indian CSGO scene, we already have our share of information for our readers. Just in time, things also have to seem settled. For the first timers, Indian CSGO team has two big brands which go by the brand name Eternal & Entity.
The two renowned Indian CSGO brands claimed their fame by picking some of the best players of the fraternity. In the month of November last year, Eternal had allegedly poached their squad from Entity. Entity, in the similar development, formed a new squad led by Simar ‘psy’ Sethi. In an unconditional and uncoordinated swap, Entity’s management took strict objection to the buyout and warned Eternal and their players for consequences.
In the meanwhile, other teams phased out from semi-professionals to topping the ladders in mega-events.
SemperX
JmD Gaming
2Ez
tMg
ShootingMonkeys
Slaughter Rage Army (SRA)
Iyatti
A few months later, we’re into 2018 and full of content!
Indian CSGO scene 2018
Indian CSGO scene in 2018 is calibrating itself for the events to come. Out of the top teams and players, a few have already mapped their forthcoming plan.
The due settlement of the players in the scene comes just before India Game Show 2018, which hosts an honorary esports event every year, respecting the emerging industry. We have, for the record an official statement from ex-Eternal with the announcement on Invictus reborn, and sneak-peak into Ate-Gaming,
Eternal players move to resuscitate Invictus
The team which moved to Eternal Esports after leaving Entity Gaming, have now chosen to independently play tournaments without the management, let alone a manager. The team which had the most successful run in the two consecutive – 2016 & 2017 – fiscal years couldn’t accommodate an eager home. A potential fallout with the management on whether or not Eternal would attend India Game Show 2018, lead to the squad ousted from the team.
Adding the trend, the news of Invictus being brought back to the scene soon followed. Tejas ‘ace’ Sawant unveiled the state of his attribution with Eternal, where he mentioned that a “mutual agreement” has been made between the two. Invictus’ squad was also revealed within the subsection.
Tejas ‘Ace’ Sawant
Kunal ‘PeXXeR’ Bhatia
Bharat ‘ribbiz’ Reddy
Karan ‘Excali’ Mhaswadkar
Ishpreet ‘HuNtR’ Singh
Their colleague Karan ‘Excali’ Mhaswadkar also took the opportunity to state their participation at GOTV #2 Invitational.
Fate of Eternal Gaming
The ex-Eternal squad which came in after Antidote, Hellranger & co. quit the organization, the foundation of the D2D-refined brand looked solid. As we now trail the development, the Eternal Gaming brand is completing the circle by backing Antidote & co., again.
Sabyasachi ‘ Antidote ‘ Bose
Raju ‘Pokerf’ Jittu
Vivek ‘Shabby’ Patel
Gurtej ‘Proud’ Singh
Nikhil ‘Forsaken’ Kumawat
Perhaps, a forthright conversation with the CEO of Eternal Esports, Gautam Mengi, revealed that they were going to indeed support Antidote & co. for IGS 2018 and further, try them out as trainees for two months before solidifying their employment with the organization.
Entity Gaming progresses with their roster
In between the battle of the boardrooms, Entity finds its space out of the hot environment. Although, their manager, Sid Joshi, didn’t miss the opportunity, killing two with one shot. In the capacity of Entity Gaming, Joshi hurdled his way to attack Mengi personally. Ironically, he represented Mengi when talking about the ill-behaviors of Eternal’s (now Invictus) players.
Controversies aside, Entity’s current stature right now is apt and clear. They want to perform. Not granting their players to get into any further controversies and shuffles, Sid believes with the help of their coach Prashant ‘Aequitas’ Prabhakar, 2018 is their year to charm & success. According to the manager’s state of mind, it is also not dicey to say, he is not expecting any shuffles anytime soon.
Simar ‘psy’ Sethi
Bhavin ‘HellRanger’ Kotawani
Agneya ‘Marzil’ Kaushik
Aaqib ‘Falken’ Dingankar
Anuj ‘Amaretsu’ Sharma
Prashant ‘Aequitas’ Prabhakar
Entity will be seen competing at a Delhi event, which is hosted by MTV fame, Ranvijay Singh.
SemperX aiming a refreshing start to the year
The team with firepower and experience. Altogether, SemperX is the team to watchout for the year as it progresses. Although there are speculations on how the team markets itself, in the long run, it is unsure how they will re-brand themselves, if at all.
With the experience and tactful skill Manan and Mithil holds, the team can stand their ground strong in the arena. It is prudent to say, that they will indeed stick together for a longer period.
Manan ‘Manan’ Bhat
Mithil ‘MithilF’ Sawant
Shailesh ‘Blackhawk’ Dalvi
Jay ‘Fox’ Shah
Varun ‘Spy’ Mehta
The team, however, has a long way to go. Entity, Eternal and almost everything team have been associated with earlier, knows their strategy from the game. They do have the young talent in the roster, we’ll see how the year goes for SemperX!
Ate Gaming probable to resurrect
This is a speculation coming from a couple of community-driven influencers. We, as of now, have nothing concrete to back the claim of the squad making a comeback after almost half a decade. However, if at all it does, the association with brands will not be difficult for them. Karthik Rao, a community veteran who steered Ate Gaming’s successful run a decade ago, had a tremendous track record with the organization, perhaps, he is occupied, rendering his services to Nvidia.
Eventually, if Ate Gaming indeed, makes a comeback, two of the ex-Ate players reportedly will guide the organization through including, RitZ and Kappa.
Akshay ‘Kappa’ Sinkar
Ritesh ‘RitZ’ Shah
Hasnain ‘impale’ Sayed
Sharan ‘Buster’ Dave
–
According to our good sources, Ate Gaming still doesn’t have a fifth player to complete the squad, and the search is on.
2ez Gaming ropes in Cooler Master
Photo Source: ESL
New horse in the derby, 2Ez Gaming have little to share and a lot to show. The squad from Mumbai gained their followership in the last season of ESL India Premiership, where they challenged their opponents to get back to the textbook rules!
Tejas ‘Rex’ Kotian
Rahul ‘Tito’ Sridhar
Chinmay ‘Poki’ Mehta
Sunny ‘Recoilmaster’ Gadge
Vinit ‘ShinChan’ Patil
2ez Gaming has recently announced their signing of the peripheral brand, Cooler Master. We reckon this will attract a few eyes towards them, this apart, the players will also get a morale boost going forward in the year.
However, on the other side, Brutality, players of which are actively participating in a televised reality show were not a part of this write-up. Since we’ve not seen the original roster engaging in the on-going competitive tournaments and their players already venturing into alternative avenues for the time being.
Shahzeeb ‘ShahZaM’ Khan one of the best awper in Misfits CS:GO team has entered the free agent market earlier this week, alongwith Sean “sgares” Gares, and Hunter “SicK” Mims.
Considering their performance at ELEAGUE Major : Boston 2018 they were struggling to be on the top, following their elimination into the challenger’s group with a record of 1-3.
According to a report François “AmaNEk” Delaunay and David “devoduvek” Dobrosavljevic remain tied to the organization until March, no one knows about their future plans though.
I really do enjoy playing with my team and would like to continue on with them 👍🏻
According to our sources “The players haven’t been offered another deal with the organization, even though Misfits initially intended on renewing their contracts.”
The team only had One Best-Of–One Win against Flipside3 at ELeague Major : Boston 2018 Main Qualifiers after getting destroyed badly from teams like Space Soldiers, G2 Esports, and Avangar. So it’s possibly a low chance that the organization will think about renewing the players’ contract by looking at their performance a the opening stage of the Major.
ELEAGUE has revealed the first round match-ups for the ELEAGUE Boston 2018 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major.
The drawn has shown up an exciting match between the current major champion GAMBIT, and their former in-game leader’s new team NAVI`. Along with Team G2 facing Team Cloud 9 who made their way into the LEGEND Stage from the challenger’s stage with a record of 3-0.
G2 will be facing C9 in their first match.
The New Legend Stage will feature eight surviving teams from the Challengers stage—who earned “Challenger” spots at the next Major—will go up against the eight Legends in another set of Swiss matches. Like the previous stage, the New Legends stage allows eight of the best teams to continue on to the next stage, while the eight remaining teams will be eliminated. This stage will begin on Jan. 12, with a rolling schedule beginning at 10 am EST i.e 8:30 PM.
Below you can find the full draw for the first round of the New Legends Stage, which kicks off on Friday:
BIG vs. Liquid
Virtus.pro vs. Quantum Bellator Fire
Gambit vs. Natus Vincere
Astralis vs. mousesports
North vs. Vega Squadron
SK vs. Space Soldiers
fnatic vs. FaZe
Cloud9 vs. G2
The Major will take place from January 19-29 in Atlanta, Georgia with the playoffs taking place at the Fox Theatre. The 16 teams will be fighting for the lion’s share of the $1 million prize pool.
The third day of the ELEAGUE Major : Boston 2018 came to an end, and the competition is getting interesting as the fourth day approaches.
Image Credits : HLTV
G2 Esports and Cloud9 have booked their spot in the ELEAGUE Major Boston’s New Legends Stage with a 3-0 win-loss record, placing themselves at the top of this weekend’s standings. #BostonMajor2018
It took a total of 35 rounds for G2, but the French team finally qualified after defeating Vega Squadron, 19-16, on Overpass whereas, Cloud9 defeated Mousesports with a scoreline of 16-5 on train.
However, FaZe clan defeated Flash Gaming and Natus Vincere crushed Sprout Esports 16-3 on Mirage, followed by Space Soldiers defeating Misfits 16-13 on Train, and Team Liquid survived a 30-round contest against Renegades on Cobblestone 16-14.
Flash Gaming and FlipSid3 Tactics were sent home after they suffered tough losses to Team Envy and AVANGAR, respectively in elimination matches.
Tomorrow's match-ups! We start at 10am, and finish laaaaaaate. Get ready for ALL THE CS:GO. !drops pic.twitter.com/kW7HbGQNtl
