"If you're a football club and you're worried about a new generation of potential fans addicted to League of Legends games, then you need to go and take them in alternative ways," says EA Sports CEO Peter Moore. This quote best explains why European clubs are increasingly signing contracts with players in virtual football, and individual leagues are arranging full-fledged esports championships.
There are now two major series of virtual football in the world, but the popularity of FIFA and its Japanese rival PES (Pro Evolution Soccer) is incomparable. FIFA 17 sold 1.1 million copies in its first week in the UK alone, the same in Germany and other European countries. PES sells out about 40 times worse, but even such sales volumes do not prevent Konami from signing contracts with Barcelona and UEFA. Simultaneously with Euro 2016, a PES tournament was organized, the matches of which were broadcast in the fan zone near the Eiffel Tower. Even if an outsider has enough resources for such events, then the market should be recognized as serious.
It is clear that clubs are mastering esports in the hope of making money: the industry is developing extremely intensively. According to a report by Newzoo, in 2016 total esports revenue was $492 million and is expected to rise to $1.5 billion by 2020. The spectator audience already now exceeds 300 million people a year: 162 million are a permanent audience, 161 million watch tournaments rarely, from time to time.
In the US, interest in eSports is so great that individual players and teams are signed by specific athletes. Brooklyn Nets point guard Jeremy Lin created a Dota2 team with his own money and called it Team VGJ. Another basketball player, Rick Fox, purchased an already existing team, but renamed it Echo Fox. Of the players, the Brazilian Ronaldo showed interest in e-sports, having invested in 50% of the shares of the local CNB e-Sports Club team. Gerard Piqué is also going to create an eSports project from scratch - by the way, he already has a video game company, Kerad Games.
What is this all for?
Despite the rapid growth of esports, virtual football is not yet so profitable. In the ranking of the most popular online games, FIFA 17 does not even creep into the top ten. To make a difference and motivate players, the creators of the game (EA Sports) founded the FIFA Interactive World Cup tournament, which is spending more and more every year. In 2017 prize fund will be 1.3 million dollars, of which 200 thousand will go to the winner. This is 10 times more than last year, but still very small compared to global esports - for example, the winner of the Dota2 (The international) main tournament last year received more than $8 million.
“Fifa 17 is played by millions of people every day. Many of them learn about players and teams through the game, choose who to root for in the future. If only for these reasons, we are interested in esports,” explains Diego Gigliani, senior vice president of media and innovation at City Football Group (Manchester City and New York City). English club one of the first signed a contract with a cyberfootball player - 19-year-old Kieran Brown. Not only does he represent City in various tournaments, but he is also bound by the number of Twitch live streams and YouTube videos he uploads. On match days, Fifer meets with the club's fans and teaches them how to play FIFA 17. A similar model has already been adopted by Wolfsburg, “ West Ham”, PSV, Ajax, Sporting Lisbon, PSG, Brondby, Panathinaikos, River Plate.
At the league level, e-football is most actively developed in France and Holland. Ligue 1 in October last year announced the holding of the first FIFA 17 tournament. Most likely, PSG will win it - the sheiks and in this situation decided to take the best by signing two-time world champion August Rosenmeier and one of the most promising fifers Luca Chielje. The Dutch announced the creation of a virtual Eredivisie only in mid-January, but it is already known that the matches will be broadcast not only by Twitch and YouTube, but also by the local television company Fox Sports. Each cyberfootball player will be considered a real representative of his club.
There are no independent tournaments in England yet, but BT Sport, which broadcasts the Champions League, has agreed with EA to show the key stages of Fifa Ultimate Team championship series. This is the first time e-football will appear on such a large venue and appear on serious television. First, BT Sport will show the North American qualifier for the FIFA 17 World Cup, then the Asia-Pacific region will turn on, then the European qualifier will take place, and on May 20 and 21 the final stage will take place in Berlin.
Now in Russia
The third league in Europe, where the official FIFA 17 championship appeared, was Russia.
Before the resumption of the Premier League, a tournament was held in Ufa, in which representatives of all 16 clubs played. “In the future, the cyberfootball championship will most likely run parallel to the real one,” said Yury Soshinsky, head of the Russian Cyberfootball Federation. “So far, this Cup is a kind of independent tournament without continuation.”
Soshinsky admits that in fact the Russian FIFA Championship has been held for three years without any participation from the Premier League. “This championship is part of a global tournament run by EA and FIFA. The winner of our tournament will have the opportunity through the next few stages to reach the final in London. At the same time, there will be a separate stage for those who directly represent football clubs.”
After the recognition of esports at the state level, the affairs of the federation went better. Virtual football has ceased to be an unrecognized hobby for teenagers after the November meeting of the executive committee of the RFU. Then the mayor of Kazan and the president of Rubin, Ilsur Metshin, suggested that Vitaly Mutko develop a fashionable theme. The idea was publicly supported, but no actual steps were taken from the RFU. Then the Premier League played ahead of the curve by organizing the Russian Cup.
The league as a whole should be satisfied with the tournament: on the official YouTube channel of the Premier League, the broadcasts of three days of the competition collected a total of approximately 200,000 views (on average, a video on the channel is gaining about 5,000, with the exception of match reviews). On VKontakte, broadcasts of matches have collected more than 720,000 views.
“Everything in our country is, in fact, being built from scratch - we receive some kind of support from the government only in Last year. Before that, there was nothing. We came to the RFPL three years ago, but then they were not very interested: they did not understand why it was necessary. But now we are actively cooperating with them. We talked with the RFU several times, no more. They seem to be interested in the development of e-football, but they do nothing,” Soshinsky notes.
Russian clubs do not yet fully understand the prospects for a new direction. Some chose to the last who will represent them at the Cup in Ufa, and it is possible that all cooperation will end with participation in the mandatory tournaments.
“Not a single club in Russia can be called progressive in terms of development virtual football. There are several of them in the world, - said the head of the cyberfootball federation. - The only thing that Spartak is better than others is that they took the only player in the country whose level of play and media coverage is comparable. But he’s the only one, the rest will catch up with time.”
Spartak signed a contract with Sergey "Kefir" Nikiforov. Now it is the most recognizable fifer in the country: 150,000 subscribers on VKontakte, 700,000 on YouTube. At the tournament in Ufa, Nikiforov dropped out at the 1/4 final stage, losing the derby to Andrey Guryev from CSKA. In the fall, Guryev won the Russian championship, and now he has won the Cyberfootball Cup for the "army team".
“My opinion is that all the clubs were simply forced to determine the player who will participate in the Cup and the championship from them. It feels like after these tournaments the guys will be forgotten until the next major competition, - said Kefir. - Clubs do not quite understand what it is. They will pay for their flight, give them a club T-shirt to perform, and that’s it.”
What Russian clubs they are only looking at e-football, and they confirm it at Zenit. Commenting on cooperation with the best e-football player of St. Petersburg Ruslan Yaminov, the club noted that the contract is short-term.
“The current agreement is preliminary and is designed for three months, until May 2017, but we expect that our cooperation with Ruslan will not be limited to the RFPL tournament,” Zenit said. – We have serious plans for joint work. It is absolutely certain that Zenit fans have an interest in e-football, and the news about the start of cooperation with Ruslan Yaminov caused a response no less than the message about newcomers to the first football team.
The Russian Football Premier League (RFPL) Cyberfootball Cup will be held in Ufa on February 24–26. 16 players will take part in the tournament, each of which represents one of the clubs of the elite division of the national championship.
TASS talks about the features of eSports competitions and the financial side of a professional game of football simulators.
Cyberfootball flagships and their patrons
The most popular and successful lines of football simulations for many years are the FIFA series (from the Canadian company EA Sports) and Pro Evolution Soccer (abbreviated as PES, the developer is the Japanese company Konami). Most of the gaming market belongs to the FIFA series, although the Japanese simulator has its own audience.
To play cyber football with Gianni Infantino (FIFA president - TASS note)? And what, why not. We have already played real football in the summer
Vitaly Mutko
Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, President of the RFU (December 2016)
The main difference between the two games is the realism of the game model (gameplay) and licenses for tournaments (FIFA owns the rights to most of Europe's leading tournaments, a total of 35 leagues in the version of the game released in 2016. PES, in turn, owns the rights to the largest club European competitions: Champions League, Europa League and UEFA Super Cup; from 2011 to 2016, the main club tournament was presented in the game South America- Copa Libertadores).
The FIFA and PES series are supported by various international football organizations. The EA Sports series is backed by the International Football Federation (FIFA), while the Konami product is backed by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). The prize money for the winner and finalist of the FIFA (Interactive FIFA World Cup 2017) and Pro Evolution Soccer (PES League) tournaments is the same. The champions will receive $200,000, and the losers in the final matches will receive $100,000.
The selection of participants for e-football competitions is carried out according to a system that includes several qualifying stages. For example, 32 players will enter the tournament under the auspices of FIFA (16 on PlayStation 4 consoles, 16 on Xbox). The quotas between the participants are divided as follows: ten winners of the European qualification (five players for each of the two types of consoles), eight - the American one (four participants each), four - the rest of the world (two for PlayStation and Xbox). An additional eight places are awarded to the winners of the FIFA 17 Ultimate Team Online Championship (four players each). One more place for each of the consoles will be played among e-sportsmen who have signed contracts with real clubs (German Wolfsburg, Spanish Valencia, English Manchester City and Portuguese Sporting).
In addition to tournaments under the auspices of FIFA and UEFA, other international e-football competitions are held, such as the Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC). Its total prize fund in 2016 amounted to $15,000, the winner received $8,000, the finalist - $4,000, and the third-place winner - $2,000. The fourth place was CSKA cyberplayer Andrey Guryev, he earned $1,000.
The largest prize money in eSports
The most profitable games for esports players are real-time strategy and role-playing games. dota games 2 (2016 tournament prize pool $20.7 million, winner received $9.1 million) and League of Legends ($5 million and $2 million respectively), as well as first-person shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive ($1 .5 million and $800 thousand)
The leadership positions of these games are provided not only by a large audience, but also by the fact that the game has been functioning for many years. It is impossible for sports simulators that come out annually to compete with "long-playing" projects in this indicator.
History of esports in Russia
Russia was the first country to recognize computer sports as an official sport. The corresponding order in July 2001 was signed by the head of the State Committee of the Russian Federation for Physical Culture and Sports Pavel Rozhkov. After the transformation of the structure into the Federal Agency for physical culture and sports, as well as the introduction of the All-Russian Register of Sports, the procedure was repeated in March 2004 by decision of the head of the department, Vyacheslav Fetisov.
In July 2006, this sport was removed from the register, as it did not meet the criteria for inclusion in this list: it was not developed in more than half of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. In addition, there was no specialized all-Russian physical culture and sports association registered in the country. In June 2016, the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation returned the status of an official sport to computer sports.
About RFPL Cyberfootball Cup
The draw ceremony will take place on 24 February. The first stage, in which 16 participants will be divided into two groups of eight players (meetings in the "each-to-each" format), and the quarter-final meetings (starting from this round of a series of matches to two victories of one of the players) will be held on February 25. The semi-finals and the decisive match of the first official e-football tournament in Russian history will be held on February 26.
Any direction that fans are interested in is important for the club. They like it, which means it should interest us as well.<...>The ratings and popularity of esports do not allow us to stand aside. Therefore, we signed contracts with two esportsmen at once
Daria Spivak
Marketing Director of FC Lokomotiv
Game platform - prefix Sony PlayStation 4, a simulator to determine the winner - FIFA 17 produced by EA Sports.
The main goals set for the organizers of the Cup: preparation of participants for performance at international tournaments, as well as expanding the base of fans of Premier League teams at the expense of the audience of fans of computer sports.
The winner of the competition will be awarded a cup and a commemorative medal. In addition, the organizing committee of the event reserves the right to establish cash prizes for participants.
Each of the 16 Premier League clubs is represented at the tournament by one esportsman. At competitions in Ufa, teams from the elite Russian football will be represented by the following players:
Contracts with professional cyberfootball players, in particular, were signed by CSKA, Spartak, Zenit and Ufa, while Rostov, Krasnodar, Ural and Krylya Sovetov held regional qualifying competitions that determined the players who will represent their teams at the RFPL Cup.
Also, the Bashkir e-sportsman admitted that he does not think about whether his "native walls" will help him. "What will actually happen, we will know only in the days of the tournament," he summed up.
About the RFPL open e-football championship
Late January (PlayStation 4) and early February ( Xbox One) passed the qualifying competitions for participation in the FIFA 17 National Open Championship. Two players from each qualifying stage advanced to the final part of the tournament. At the decisive stage, they will play with representatives of the clubs of the Russian Premier League. The final of the national e-football championship will be held in Kazan in early March (date and place not yet determined). The winner of the championship, in addition to the title, will receive the right to play in European qualifying competitions interactive world championship under the auspices of the International Football Federation (FIFA).
The decisive matches of the world e-football championship will be held in London. Their winner will receive an invitation to the FIFA Awards, including best player 2017.
Andrey Mikhailov
Compared with real football, the virtual one in our country is quite competitive, we even have our own world champions, and Russia was the first to come up with the idea of organizing an esports federation. At the end of 2016, six clubs of the Spanish Examples decided to create a championship, we went further (the initiator was Ufa, where the role of Azamat Muratov, the head of the Bashkir branch of the Federation of Computer Russia, is important). The first sign was the RFPL Cup, where each team was represented by one e-sportsman. The question arose, where to get them?
The pioneer in this case was the same Ufa, which signed a contract last summer with the 2015 FIFA world champion Robert Fakhretdinov. The next step was taken by Spartak, who attracted Sergey Nikiforov, known under the pseudonym Kefir, to his ranks. The red-whites made bets not only on sports success, but also on the media, which made it possible to attract new fans. If someone does not know, then Sergey is a famous blogger, and main team even takes it to the training camp. The rest of the clubs went two ways.
The first is the signing of contracts with cyberfootball players whose names are already known to the public. This is exactly what they did in CSKA (Andrey Guryev), Krasnodar (Andrey Konnov), Zenit (Ruslan Yaminov). The second way - holding by clubs qualifying tournaments. They were used by Terek, Amkar, Anji, Ural and other teams. The second option is the most controversial, since the strongest does not always win.
The Premier League has finally decided that esports is a sport. Here is the argument of RFPL Executive Director Sergei Cheban: “If it’s competitiveness, if it’s excitement, if one, two, three, several participate. Of course, sports, how it ignites, what dynamics, in my opinion, sports. ".
The status of the event is evidenced by the fact that one of the commentators was Kirill Nabutov, and Gennady Sergeevich Orlov was the guest of honor. During the match between Ufa and Zenit, he enthusiastically applauded Robert Fakhretdinov, who scored one of the goals, before that assisting his player who scored with his heel. Here is what the master of sports journalism thinks about the tournament: "It seems that there are no losers. Ufa won (spoiler) the Champions League place, so everyone should be happy. The guys have a head, that is, they teach football correctly. This is real football propaganda - tactics , technique, as Sergei Bogdanovich told me, it was his dream team, so that the players were so technical and tactically literate. Cyberfootball in Russia live!"
First, a draw took place, which divided the e-football players into two groups. They had to play 7 matches each, then the quarter-finals (they got 4 best teams from each group), semi-final and final series up to two victories. All virtual players had a fixed rating (85), so, for example, the advantage of Zenit over Tom could not be overwhelming.
In group "A" maximum result Anton Klenov, representing Lokomotiv, showed at the group stage. The two-time champion of the country "Kefir", which was always dragged by a dozen schoolchildren, took second place, the players of "Amkar" and "Orenburg", respectively, took the third and fourth positions.
But in group "B", which was noticeably stronger in terms of composition, everything was many times more interesting. Its winner was Andrei Konnov from Krasnodar, who has 4 wins and 3 draws. Like the real Krasnodar, the virtual one was marked by a bright game. What is worth the victory over Zenit (4:3) and a draw with CSKA (4:4). The second place with exactly the same number of points was taken by the favorite of the Ufa public, Robert Fakhretdinov, who suffered two defeats (against Rubin and Krasnodar). The third place belongs to CSKA, the fourth - to Zenit. Interesting fact about Anton Zhukov from Kazan - in 2015 he was disqualified for a fixed game.
The quarter-finals were not without sensations: Konnov from Krasnodar, who had not yielded before, was knocked out by the representative of Orenburg, Kirill Ordinartsev, in three matches. Left the tournament at this stage and "Kefir" - his "Spartak" was beaten by CSKA. Moreover, the score of the first match was 0:4. The other semi-finalists were Loko and Ufa players. In the semi-finals, Robert beat Kirill in the class, and in another pair, it took all three matches to determine the winner - the e-footballer from CSKA turned out to be more successful.
In the final, he continued his victorious pace, defeating the representative of Ufa, for whom the whole hall was rooting (both matches ended with a score of 3:2). It remains to be hoped that Andrey Guryev will not take cyber-fourth place in the Cyber Champions League. The last match was watched by the players of the Ufa football club, led by Sergey Semak, who shared his impressions of what he saw: “Thank you guys for a very interesting game, they kept us in suspense, our players enjoyed the excellent content and quality of the game, we take note for ourselves what we need to improve in. It would be possible to attract some guys as analysts. "
The winner himself comments on his success in the following way: "All the matches were quite difficult, I went through the group very difficult. I won the derby, I can highlight this, main match with “Spartacus”, it is most memorable. You may not win the tournament, but it would be unforgivable not to win the derby with Spartak."
Separately, it is worth mentioning the interest of the audience. By the end of the first day, the number of views stopped at about 3 million people, of which more than 700 thousand in social network" In contact with". And the broadcast on Twitch entered the top 10 broadcasts of all games that took place on that day, which was a historic achievement for Russian e-football and FIFA 17.
At the end of 2016, Deputy Prime Minister Russian Federation Vitaly Mutko at a meeting of the executive committee of the Russian Football Union, he made it clear that e-football is of interest to sports officials. “We thought that the development of e-football is an interesting topic. At this stage, the Ministry of Sports has approved the eSports Federation. We need to figure out whether cyberfootball will enter it or become a kind of football. We
we can hold Russian championships under the auspices of the RFU. Perhaps we will hold the Cyberfootball World Cup in Russia. Maybe at least we will become champions in it, ”the official said then.
20 days after the announcement, the Russian Football Premier League announced the open championship Premier League and OLIMP RFPL Cup on cyberfootball. The last one will be held in the entertainment complex "Ogni Ufa" from 24 to 26 February 2017. "This is an official tournament Russian Premier League. The cup will be received not by the player, but by the club he represents. We will make beautiful sports holiday. This is the first experience in Russia when, within the league, players will compete in the field of cyberfootball,” explains one of the organizers of the upcoming tournament, head of the Bashkir branch of the Federation of Computer Russia Azamat Muratov.
This is the official tournament of the Russian Premier League. The cup will be received not by the player, but by the club he represents.
RFPL Executive Director Proximity of football and e-football audiences. “Life has shown that esports has a great future both in terms of investment and audience coverage. And we are very interested that the audience involved in eSports be our audience, so we found common ground. I think e-football and big football audiences will be exchanged,” Cheban said.
Cybersportsmen also talk about mixing real and virtual football. So, the player signed by Zenit Ruslan Yaminov admits that from the age of six he was involved in big football, but failed to become professional athlete. “Now I have the opportunity to bring value to my favorite club in cyberspace,” he adds. “I feel a great responsibility and desire to prove that esports is serious.”
Now I have the opportunity to bring value to my favorite club in cyberspace.
In a similar way, I got into eSports and Robert "Ufenok77" Fakhretdinov. He played football since childhood, and after a knee injury he switched to virtual games. Now he is one of the strongest players in FIFA. Among his achievements, in particular, the title of world champion in 2015 according to WSVG and victory in the Cup of Russia in 2016. Robert will represent FC Ufa at the RFPL OLYMP Cup in e-football, which was one of the first among Russian clubs to look for and sign an e-sports player.
"OLIMP RFPL Cyberfootball Cup" might not have seen the light of the day, if not for Electronic Arts, which managed to interest football clubs with its game. The pioneer was the German football club Wolfsburg, which signed a contract with e-footballers in January 2016. The trend was picked up by other eminent clubs - Besiktas, Schalke 04, Sporting, West Ham United, Manchester City, Bayern, PSG and Lyon. the first Russian football club, who signed the contract with the e-sportsman, was Volga. A week before the start of the competition, almost all Russian clubs playing in the elite division Russian championship, announced the signing of contracts with esportsmen.
“Real football very much draws attention away from e-football. Lots of people play FIFA, but some of them just don't know that it's also a very interesting competition. This has never been popularized before, including by the developers themselves, unlike, say, League of Legends. Electronic Arts started investing in eSports only last year,” says the head of the Russian Cyberfootball Federation Yuri Soshinsky.
16 players will take part in the upcoming tournament, each of which will represent his football club. Playing for Spartak Sergei "kefir" Nikiforov considers the e-sportsmen of the football clubs CSKA, Zenit and Ufa to be the main favorites of the competition. This list also includes the Spartak player himself, who is a two-time FIFA champion of Russia.
The composition of the participants of the "OLIMP RFPL Cyberfootball Cup":
Ruslan Yaminov (FC Zenit)
Sergei "kefir" Nikiforov (FC Spartak)
Andrey "Timon" Guryev (FC CSKA)
Anton "KLENOFF" Klenov and Konstantin "STAVR" Girin (both - FC Lokomotiv)
Robert «Ufenok77» Fakhretdinov (FC Ufa)
Kirill "Aruhito" Ordinartsev (FC Orenburg)
Alexey Oleinik (FC Rostov)
Maxim Kirilov (FC Krylya Sovetov)
Ilya Belosludtsev (FC Amkar)
Omar Aliyev (FC Ural)
Shamil Kurbangadzhiev (FC Anji)
Andrey Konnov (FC Krasnodar)
Valentin Moroz (FC Tom)
Vyacheslav Alkhazov (FC Arsenal)
Umar Baisagurov (FC Terek)
Anton Zhukov (FC Rubin)
One of the tournament participants, Kirill Ordinartsev, an e-sportsman of the Orenburg football club, expects that after such an event, people, organizations and sponsors will have a great interest in e-football. The player admits that he began preparing for the competition immediately after signing a contract with the football club: “I try to spar as much as possible with strong players, analyze past matches and look for the best combinations, schemes and tactics for the upcoming tournament.”
After such an event, people, organizations and sponsors will have a great interest in e-football.
Sergey “kefir” Nikiforov from Spartak, on the contrary, is going to devote only the last few days before the start of the tournament to intensive preparation for the Cup: “I always prepare for tournaments for three days, I just sit down and play a little more than usual. On a typical day, I will play for two hours, and before the competition I will play five or six hours a day.
However, the success of the event depends not only on the preparation of the players. , it is important how this tournament will be presented in the media, in particular on television. At the moment, the broadcast of the matches was announced by the TV channel Game Show. Games will be shown on the website of the Russian Football Premier League and on the pages of Premier League clubs in social networks. One of the information partners of the tournament is "Championship".
