Esports

2015 looked set to be a big year for eSports, but on many accounts it ended up being somewhat larger than many anticipated. Viewer numbers increased, both live and online, with 36 million tuning into the League of Legends World Championship final whilst tournament prize pools also grew. The prize pool for the International Dota 2 tournament this year was $18m …

Two of the world’s largest daily fantasy sports companies, DraftKings and FanDuel, have agreed a fast tracked court schedule with Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. This follows a decision by Madigan that daily fantasy sports constitute illegal gambling and as such would no longer be allowed in the state of Illinois. Both DraftKings and FanDuel have filed litigation against this opinion, and as such …

The verified status on Twitter is exclusively reserved for key figures across major industries. Despite maintaining a huge audience and accounting for some of the most engaged userbases on the platform, Twitter has been reluctant to verify any eSports figures except for a very select few. Players from the teams Cloud9 and Team SoloMid were verified earlier this week, and the …

The League of Legends developer Riot Games has sold the remainder of its shares to major gaming company Tencent. Tencent owns a significant portion of Activision Blizzard in addition to 40% of Epic Games, the Gear of War developer. It also owns shares of other companies such as Miniclip, Glu Mobile and Robot Entertainment. In a statement a spokesperson for Riot Games stated: …

Former LA Lakers forward and NBA star Rick Fox has bought eSports League of Legends team Gravity. Gravity was only formed in January 2015 but will now enter future League of Legends tournaments under the new name of Echo Fox.   League of Legends is amongst the most popular titles in competitive gaming, though competition is set to become increasingly tight with major …

A new eSports engagement platform called Matcherino has announced a successful investment funding round in which it raised $1.25m (£839,000). The seed round was led by Madrona Venture Group with participation from Vulcan Capital and angel investors including Seahawks offensive linesman Russell Okung. The platform is one which offers fans the chance to make the eSports matches happen that they …

DraftKings Inc has delayed its planned product launch for the UK fantasy sports market, pushing back its release to “early next year”. The US based fantasy sports operator, confirmed the delay this morning via the release of a short statement. Having gained a UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) licence in August, DraftKings had earmarked the release of dedicated UK DFS product …

Evolve Labs have launched a new eSports arena called BlackFlag. It will initially focus on Riot Games’ League of Legends (LoL) with teams of five paying a $5 (£3) entry fee to compete for cash prizes. Launched in 2010 and based in the US, Evolve Labs are the creators of Evolve, the social collaboration platform for PC gamers. Adam Sellke, …

Major gaming news site Lazygamer has announced its eSports industry award winners for 2015.  There were five categories to congratulate those who have enjoyed success across the industry, and there were six nominees per category. Here are the 2015 winners. Best eSports Organisation: Bravado Gaming Best eSports Team: Bravado Gaming Dota 2 Best eSports Player: Dimitri ‘Detrony’ Hadjipaschali (CS:GO) Best …

The ongoing investigations into the legality of daily fantasy sports hit New York recently, with a ruling stating that neither DraftKings nor FanDuel would be allowed to conduct business in the state for the foreseeable future. Despite this ruling though it has been announced that both companies will be allowed to remain operational in New York, for the time-being at …