ESL, the world’s largest esports company, wrapped up 2019 with record-breaking numbers, concluding another successful year in esports. ESL conducted numerous online and offline competitions and created live and original esports content across platforms, like Twitch, Youtube, and Facebook. The company believes that mobile esports will be further building a bridge between hardcore esports enthusiasts and casual gamers and thus, will enjoy an even wider rise in 2020, so Mobile Gaming will be a big focus in the new year for ESL.
Ahead of the celebration of ESL’s 20th Anniversary in 2020, the company rolled out a completely new brand refresh, which included a new purpose-led brand positioning “ to create a world where everybody can be somebody,” which reflects the company’s values and founding story.
ESL Pro Tour CS:GO in 2019
ESL, together with DreamHack, launched ESL Pro Tour CS:GO in 2019, featuring an aggregate prize pool of over $5 million for 2020 from competitions on five different continents, making it the world’s largest and most lucrative circuit in Counter-Strike’s 20-year history.
Furthermore, ESL executed the most-watched ESL CS:GO competition ever with IEM Katowice (126 million hours watched in total and therefore a 212% increase in minutes watched compared to 2018) as well as the most successful ESL CS:GO competition on US soil viewership-wise with ESL One New York (6.6M hours watched and almost 20M video views, both excl. China).
ESL finished the year having almost 9.5 million total registered users on ESL Play (an increase of 11% to last year), once again bringing players together on a truly global level and marking a peak growth since its start. Consumption/Watch time for ESLs major leagues and tournaments grew by 170% compared to 2018.
Further records were reached with ESL global tournaments, including ESL One Birmingham (most-watched ESL Dota event ever, 54 million watched hours), ESL Pro League Season 9 (most-watched EPL finals ever, 31million watched hours), and ESL One Cologne (most-watched non-major CS tournament of all time, 37 million watched hours).
With the new brand refresh in 2019, the company also updated its image with a new award-winning, stand out identity and a new brand architecture for its tournaments and leagues (Masters, Challenger and Open). According to ESL, it highlighted the company values and supports the strategy to continue leading the esports industry. The new brand positioning reflects the ESL vision of growth of esports and to build leagues and tournaments for gamers that would create more opportunities for participation and progression than any other sport.
According to ESL’s document, mobile esports, already representing a promising future, kicked off with the ESL Mobile Open Presented by AT&T in the United States and the Vodafone 5G ESL Mobile Open in Milan. The competition in Milan was the first Grand Final in competitive esports to be played out live over a 5G network and featured a total prize pool of €165,000.
Last week, ESL Gaming and DreamHack announced a three-year strategic partnership with Twitch. As part of the deal, some of the world’s biggest esports tournaments, including #ESLProLeague, will be streamed exclusively on Twitch in 2021 and 2022 for English language.
About us
We are a unique communications agency, dedicated to a single market for the past 23 years: videogames and esports. Promoting the interaction between companies and geek and gamer audiences, we currently support corporations from several different segments that wish to connect their brands to gaming and eSports fans, influencers, and journalists. Read more news like this on our blog.
Follow our social networks: Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn