Esports Premier League (ESPL) has roped in global premium smartphone brand, TECNO Mobile as its presenting sponsor for the second edition of the country’s first franchise-based league for gaming after the overwhelming success of the inaugural edition.
This year’s league is set to engage gamers across the country in a high-voltage action with the most popular battle royale game, BATTLEGROUNDS MOBILE INDIA (BGMI) which carries a big prize pool of Rs 1 crore.
The champion team will take home Rs 50 lakh while the second and third-placed teams will bag Rs 25 lakh and Rs 10 lakh respectively. Top-16 teams will be awarded cash prizes and the Most Valuable Player Award winner will be richer by Rs 1 lakh.
“The first season of the Esports Premier League was a great success and this time we will try to make it even bigger. We are thrilled to have TECNO Mobile on board as the title sponsor for this event. Just like how TECNO Mobile is committed to unlocking the best contemporary technologies for its customers, we are also committed to providing a world-class platform for Indian talent through this league in order to develop the Indian esports ecosystem, taking it to the next level,” said ESPL director Vishwalok Nath.
TECNO Mobile plans to promote its upcoming smartphone phone, TECNO Pova 3 through this league. The poised to launch smartphone will give class-apart gaming experience to the users. As per the recently released Counterpoint Market Share Report, the smartphone brand is the third-largest smartphone player in the sub-10k segment.
Talking about the recent association with ESPL, TECNO Mobile India CEO Arijeet Talapatra, said, “India’s gaming community is witnessing a boom and growing exponentially at a rate of 38 per cent per annum. The Indian gaming industry is estimated to be valued at $3.9+ billion by 2025. These developments have heightened gamers’ expectations from the technology sector and there is an increased demand for better and more powerful gaming devices with high-end processors, augmented speed and longer battery life. We have been driving this revolution with our feature-rich gaming devices under the ‘POVA’ series, which targets the mid-range segment. With the POVA product line, we are determined to provide Indian smartphone consumers with a trinity of speed, power and performance that supplements the Zillenials’ never-ending hustle and further motivates them to ‘Stop at Nothing’. Our association with ESPL is bringing us forward towards achieving the same goal. We are looking ahead to a valuable partnership to create a more exciting online gaming ecosystem.”
The league will be played in two separate stages in the initial phase – online qualifiers as well as an invitational qualifier – to shortlist the top 16 teams. The first 12 teams, top two teams from the online event and top-10 teams from the invitational qualifiers, will progress directly into the final stage and compete for the top two spots in the final.
The teams ranked from 3 to 10 (7 teams) in the online qualifiers and teams ranked from 11 to 18 from invitational qualifiers will compete for the other top two spots available in the finals. The finals will also witness two direct invited teams competing and vying for the title.
Inaugural season of ESPL recorded more than one million registrations and 100 million-plus video views as the action was streamed LIVE on the official YouTube and Facebook channels of India Today and Aaj Tak and its websites.
Nath continued, “Every season we plan to do something different in order to take the league to the next level. The upcoming edition will also be action-packed, especially with players fighting it out on the BGMI esports maps which is a very popular title among the gaming community. This platform is for our athletes and they are equally excited.ESPL is a game-agnostic tournament to ensure that India Today Group offers the maximum opportunities to gamers across the nation.”
Professional athletes as well as esports enthusiasts above the age of 16 can participate in the ESPL Season 2. Each team should have a minimum of four members. The registration for ESPL will kickstart from 10 June. The last date for registration is 20 June. Each team should have a minimum of four members.