03/19/20: NASCAR is fills the coronavirus void with eNASCAR

Good morning! This is your weekly Esports Brief.

With cars garaged as a result of the coronavirus, NASCAR and iRacing opened the doors to the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series, an exhibition esports slate that will feature some of the sports’ most talented and popular drivers. The simulation-style showcase will include a cross-section of competitors from the NASCAR Cup Series, NASCAR Xfinity Series, NASCAR Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series and a group of NASCAR dignitaries and begin Sunday at 1:30p on the virtual Homestead-Miami Speedway. The remaining race and broadcast details will be announced at a later date.

“Until we have cars back on track, the entire NASCAR community has aligned to provide our passionate fans with a unique, fun and competitive experience on race day,” said Ben Kennedy, NASCAR’s vice president of racing development. “Our long-time partners at iRacing offer an incredible product, and we are excited to see how many of our best drivers will stack up in the virtual domain of competitive racing.”

Flashpoint unveiled its new online-play schedule for the remaining contests in phase one after announcing that matches would be suspended from its offline studio in LA earlier this week. Competition resumes Friday at noon with Envy/MIBR, with weekend play running through Tuesday.

Overwatch League locked in a revised slate for its online contests, designed to “eliminate the need for travel while maintaining a level playing field for the teams, so all matches are taking place based in the regions where teams are currently residing.” All teams will compete in three regions to minimize latency issues for online competition. The league is currently evaluating changes to the structure of the 2020 playoffs—including format and qualification—to account for this change. Overwatch League, which is shifting to online-only events as a result of the virus, saw VP Jon Spector reveal this week’s with play resuming on Saturday and Sunday with two matches on both days. In addition, OWL will cut the Midseason Tournament and, shift All-Star voting until the off-season.

The LEC and LCS are both back in play, with the leagues set to resume competition online, after both leagues temporarily halted their seasons as a result of the coronavirus. LEC matches will resume March 20, while LCS starts back up on March 21.

The Call of Duty League cancelled all live events for the remainder of the season. “After careful review and working in close collaboration with our teams, we are shifting all currently scheduled 2020 Call of Duty League live events to online only competition,” the league said in a statement. “The new online only matches will be broadcast live to fans. Dates will be announced shortly, along with tune-in details.”

Esports Upfront: Please note that this year’s Esports Upfront is now scheduled to take place on June 11. Participation confirmations will now be sent out in mid-May.

CS:GO‘s ESL Pro League season 11 will also be played entirely online, with the league shifting into regional divisions to limit long-distance travel for teams. Competition will feature three European groups and one North American group

Torque Esports is bringing back its The Race All-Star Esports Battle this week with the world’s top sim racers taking on leading drivers from Formula 1, IndyCar, Formula E and more. The inaugural event had a combined total of 12.1 million minutes watched on “The Race” YouTube channel – for a combined total of 23 years of total content consumed. The massive fan engagement featured nearly 30,000 combined comments and millions of impressions on social media.

The NBA 2K League is postponing the start of its 2020 season, which was slated to tip off on March 24. Over the next few weeks, teams will instead compete in preseason competitions remotely from their team markets. “The health and well-being of our players, teams and fans is of paramount importance,” said League Managing Director Brendan Donohue.

The U.S. Soccer Federation opened the doors to the USeNT Open 2020, a fully-online qualifying tournament designed to select the U.S. eNational Team representatives for the FIFA eNations Cup 2020 online qualifiers. U.S. Soccer will host the online tournament on March 28-29, with the PS4 and Xbox winners forming the two-player squad which will represent the United States during FIFA eNations Cup 2020 qualifying and other national team events.

With entertainment options limited due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the world has turned to new mediums to pass the time during the pandemic. Live streaming is one of the few industries thriving off of social distancing as platforms like Twitch are attracting larger audiences. This week, Stream Hatchet investigates the impact of COVID-19 related streams on the four major North American game streaming platforms to analyze how the virus has impacted live streaming viewership.
· Stream Titles containing COVID-19 keywords like “COVID,” “Corona,” “Virus,” or “Pandemic” have seen an 133k% increase in hours watched since Dec. 30, 2019.
· In just one week, the number of unique channels streaming with COVID-19 related titles increased 542% from the week of March 2 to the week of March 15.
· The week of March 16 has already generated almost 3 million hours watched of COVID-19 titled streams as the trend appears to continue to climb.

Please visit www.streamhatchet.com for more information regarding the growth of live streaming amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Stream Hatchet also wishes everyone good health and safety during these difficult times.

Misfits Gaming Group picked up a new partner in SoFi, the digital personal finance company, that will span across Misfits Gaming US, the Florida Mayhem and Florida Mutineers. The exclusive marketing rights deal will include the main jersey patch position across Misfits Gaming Group US properties, as well as the presenting sponsor for upcoming Florida Mayhem and Florida Mutineers live events. SoFi is one of the first fintech companies to sign a deal of this scope within esports.MGG and SoFi will work together to produce custom content pieces to run across MGG social channels tailored around personal finance and achieving ambition. “We are thrilled to be partnering with Misfits Gaming Group on this initiative,” said Lauren Stafford Webb, CMO of SoFi. “With a shared passion for drive and forward-thinking, this sponsorship is a natural fit for the SoFi brand.”

Immortals Gaming Club announced a deal with Frontier Communications to serve as its official high-speed internet provider, with the deal also touching its Owl franchise, the Los Angeles Valiant.

Danish squad North locked in a deal with Swedish energy drink brand Nocco that will see the brand provide its products to the organization’s players for the remainder of 2020.

Beasley Esports named Nathan Bender and Ric ‘Weirdbeard’ Hogerheide as the hosts of CheckpointXP’s newest show, All of Esports. “What an opportunity, to be able to talk in depth news and stats for video gamers that live and breathe the lifestyle,” said Weirdbeard. “No need to talk about entry level stuff on this show. We are here to spare the fluff and give the news that matters to you from people who ‘get’ it!”

ESPAT Media Group launched a dedicated digital photo and video licensing platform, supporting editorial subscribers and commercial partners in the field as advertising and sponsorship spending continue to increase. The move marks the company’s first attempt at launching a digital licensing platform dedicated to esports. The ESPAT partner program is designed to attract publishers, organizers, leagues and teams with the ability to distribute and monetize their digital assets. “Our team is addressing the fragmentation of third-party archives and the lack of real-time global accessibility,” said Mario Prosperino, co-founder / COO of ESPAT.

BLAST announced that TV2 Norway secured the exclusive Norwegian TV & Online rights for the BLAST Premier 2020 season. In addition, TV2 Norway will be sending two Norwegian teams to take part in the Elisa Invitational, a BLAST Premier Qualifier. “We are really excited to be able to broadcast Blast Premier in Norway. Esports has come a really long way and BLAST is a prime example of that. TV 2 has more than 25 years of experience as humble custodians of the Norwegian peoples’ passion for sports, and we aim to do the same for esports.” Vegard Jansen Hagen, TV 2 Sports Editor-in-Chief

DreamHack and ESL saw TV 2 Norway pick up Norwegian media rights for the ESL Pro Tour, the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) circuit, linking more than 20 tournaments and leagues. TV 2 Norway’s new CS:GO season broadcasts will start in March 2020, broadcasting the top CS:GO matches in the world from DreamHack and ESL’s ESL Pro Tour — including the ESL Pro League and major tournaments

Comscore locked in a new partnership with Twitch that will add tagless audience reporting of Twitch livestreaming, including gaming and esports insights, to Comscore digital audience solutions, providing a “complete, unduplicated view into digital consumption behaviors.” The partnership makes available third-party data and insights into Twitch’s engaged audiences in the U.S. and Canada. Advertisers will now have an enhanced ability to understand Twitch livestreaming video consumption habits, engage directly with key audience segments and make smarter, more accurate campaign decisions. Comscore is working to expand the integration with Twitch to other areas, such as the launch of additional markets and roll out of category- and genre-level reporting.

Twitch continues to lock in key talent to remain with the platform, this time signing heavyweight Dr Disrespect to an exclusive, multi-year deal. “Twitch is where I built my Champions Club empire and will continue to entertain the millions of fans looking for me to dominate the competition,” said Dr Disrespect, per ESPN. “Gaming related content will redefine entertainment and I am looking forward to leading the way.”

North American gaming organization High School Esports League announced the launch of their new queue system — a solution to pairing high school esports players nationwide in competitive online matches. With schools and entertainment venues shut down across the country due to the COVID-19 health crisis, student esports athletes can match with opponents from their own homes and still take part in the HSEL Spring Major tournament to win college scholarship prizes.

Scratch up another victory for Evil Geniuses, which announced Wednesday that the team signed former Echo Fox stalwarts Dominique “SonicFox” McLean and Jon “dekillsage” Coello. “I’m excited to join EG because now I can enable the anti-hero side of me hella hard,” SonicFox told ESPN. “EG are all about living outside of the norm and standing up for those that don’t have a voice, which is something I embody and stand for every day. I can’t wait to see all the things we can do together.”

100 Thieves is launching a Call of Duty: Warzone tournament for charity, titles “Warzone from Home.” Presented by CashApp, the event takes place Friday and will feature 16 teams with a $100K prize pool that will see half of it go to the winners’ charities while the other half will be given to chat.

Torque Esports and UMG Media teamed up with FaZe Clan to host an online COD-Warzone tournament to raise funds for people affected by the coronavirus. The stream was aired for viewers on FaZe Clan’s official twitch channel, UMG Media’s channel as well as on competing players’ channels in #Fight2Fund and raised $35,109.57 from the viewers, with FaZe Clan donating an additional $5,000 while Activision delivered another $10,000.

Simplicity Esports and Gaming, owner and manager of multiple esports teams, including Flamengo Esports, secured a $500,000 investment from TRITON FUNDS. The funds from the Triton investment will serve as working capital to support the achievement of Simplicity Esports’ previously stated goals of owning a team in a franchised game, broadening its offering of competitive events, including play-at-home online tournaments, and being cash flow positive.

Super League Gaming announced the expansion of its branded Gaming Clubs into eight additional domestic and international markets. Super League’s new Clubs are the Toronto Rage, Vancouver Krakens, Mexico City Solstice, Detroit Vengeance, Minneapolis Ice, Nashville Berserkers, Oklahoma City Glitch, and Salt Lake City Yetis. They enter Super League alongside the Atlanta Bashers, Las Vegas Wildcards, Philadelphia Specters, San Francisco Ionics, Seattle Siege, Los Angeles Shockwaves, Dallas Dynamite, Miami Menace, Denver Drakes, Chicago Force, New York Fury, Tampa Bay Dungeoneers, Boston Revolt, DC Conspirators, Houston Blast, and Phoenix Blaze. The new Clubs are the next step in Super League’s commitment to expand its digital and physical offerings and reach on a global scale, which includes planned growth into a network of more than 750 gaming centers worldwide.

INDUSTRY

The COVID-19 pandemic is causing gaming to surge as people stay indoors. According to Verizon’s week-on-week report, U.S. gaming usage saw a spike of 75% in the last consumption period, while video consumption grew by 12%. On a similar front, Steam reports that it hit a concurrent user record of 20 million on March 16.

Sony unveiled specs for the PlayStation 5. One of the console’s newest features will sport a custom 825GB SSD for its internal storage, compared to a 500GB HDD for the PS4. The game’s GPU contains 10.28 teraflops, compared to the PS4’s 1.84 teraflops.

Indonesia has formed a national governing body to oversee esports. The org will immediately look to draft esports regulations and guidelines that will assist Indonesian players and organizations to compete at the international level.

Gamescom is still on as planned for 2020, taking place in Cologne, Germany from Aug. 25-29, with organizers confirming that the event is still on schedule and is “currently not affected” by the lockdown placed by the German government.

Ahead of the launch of the Intellivision Amico family entertainment system launching later this year, Intellivision announced a new gameplay trailer that showcases 23 games, nearly half of which have never been seen for the Amico. “Our supporters worldwide shared our excitement when we made our first 2,600 Founders Edition units available, and we received an overwhelming demand for another opportunity to participate after we sold out,” said Tommy Tallarico, Intellivision CEO and Amico creator. “Given the potential impact on manufacturing due to COVID-19, we understand it may be difficult to find entertainment products later this year and we want to give our most loyal followers an invitation to secure their very own Amico.”

ROSTER MOVES

Gfinity announced the departure of its CEO, Graham Wallace, and executive chairman, Garry Cook, according to multiple reports. John Clarke, currently global brand and marcomms officer, will replace Wallace as chief executive, while Gfinity president and co-founder Neville Upton succeeds Cook as the company’s chairman.