Videogaming as spectactor sport? You betcha! South Africa’s biggest sports broadcaster, SuperSport, owned by DStv parent MultiChoice, has announced it has signed up to broadcast ELeague, featuring 18 elite Counter-Strike: Global Offensive teams from around the world.
The teams will compete over 10 weeks from a state-of-the-art arena in Atlanta, SuperSport said in a statement on Thursday.
The league is offering US$1,2m (about R19m) in prize money for the season.
“International teams in the mix include an eclectic bunch, among them Mousesports, Luminosity Gaming, Virtus.pro, Team Liquid and Ninjas in Pyjamas,” SuperSport said.
In the statement, the company’s CEO, Gideon Khobane, said: “ELeague is at the forefront of e-sports and we’re looking forward to charting this new frontier on both digital and television platforms. Our debut broadcast of e-sports earlier this year was very well received throughout the gaming community.”
Khobane said that more than 200m people watch e-sports annually. It prompted Amazon.com to acquire online streaming e-sports specialist Twitch.tv in 2014 for $1bn.
SuperSport said the early-week action (Monday to Thursday) will be streamed live on supersport.com, with the final nights of each week’s league play being broadcast live on SuperSport from the US early on Saturday mornings. The channels to be used are SuperSport 5, 6 and 7 on the DStv platform.
The competition runs through June and July and concludes with the global championship on 30 July, it said. — © 2016 NewsCentral Media
