9 October, 2020 | By Anzu
LVL partners with a football club to launch a tournament, the esports world gets one more all-female team, while Sony publicly takes its new console to pieces -- all that and many more impressive announcements from the esports and video games industry in our weekly news digest!
Berlin-based gaming brand and Anzu partner LVL has partnered with German football club Hertha BSC to launch a FIFA tournament series named “La LVL Liga.” The tournament is to begin tomorrow, and will continue until the end of the 2020/21 Bundesliga season in May 2021. At the end of the season, the 16 players with most points will qualify for the playoffs where a €2000 (£1,800) prize pool will be up for grabs. Besides, the top 16 players will be also invited to a boot camp and training session organised by Hertha BSC, during which they will be presented with an opportunity to be signed to the Hertha BSC esports academy. Thus, this partnership has the potential to increase Hertha BSC’s presence in the industry by cultivating new talent to its esports academy, concludes Esports Insider.
The Honour of Kings professional esports league, the King Pro League, has welcomed its first-ever all-female team: Fire Leopard. So far, Fire Leopard will appear in the King Pro League's development league, the King G-League, starting next year, where it will compete against only all-male teams. According to Gamesindustry.biz, Tencent is currently trying to encourage more women to play Honour of Kings competitively, including creating an all-women Honour of Kings tournament this year at the Tencent Global Esports Arena.
IBM says it is making its first foray into esports with a new deal with Overwatch League and becoming its official AI, cloud, and analytics partner. OWL will use IBM’s suite of analytics tools including Watson AI and machine learning to process in-match data, find new ways to showcase stats, improve the league’s ranking systems and create predictive analysis. The deal has been announced this morning, and it starts with the ongoing 2020 Grand Finals, and will last through the 2021 and 2022 OWL seasons, reports the Esports Observer.
The game industry has seen an estimated $20.5 billion in acquisitions, investments, and IPOs in the first nine months of the year, according to game investment tracking firm InvestGame. This figure points to the huge amount of investor activity that has occurred as gameplay surges during the pandemic while other sectors of the economy are falling apart. Find more details on the announced deals, acquisitions, private investments, and public market activities on VentureBeat.
With just over a month to go until the PlayStation 5 launches, Sony has finally given us a detailed look at the internal components of its next-generation console in a teardown video posted Wednesday on the PlayStation YouTube channel. Teaser: according to Masayasu Ito, Executive Vice President of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s hardware engineering and operation division, “internal structure’s looking neat and tidy, which means that there aren’t any unnecessary components and the design is efficient. As a result, we’re able to achieve our goal of creating a product with a high degree of perfection and quality.” Polygon devotes an article commenting on Sony’s official video breaking down the PS5, and urges you not to try it yourself at home.
Anzu.io is an in-game advertising platform that brings real-world brand ads to video gaming and esports. Backed by BITKRAFT Esports Ventures, WPP, and Axel Springer Digital Ventures, Anzu redefines digital advertising through seamless integration of non-intrusive ads into the gameplay. Bringing real-time data and programmatic to the video gaming world, the platform promises native advertising, brand safety and ad viewability. Follow Anzu on
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