Esports Premier League (ESPL) has roped in India’s leading gaming streaming platform LOCO as its Exclusive Digital Broadcast Partner for its second season.
LOCO is a virtual world of gaming communities that provides exclusive space to gaming creators and viewers. In the last few years, it has witnessed exponential growth, with daily active viewers having scaled by 15x, whereas monthly active viewers have seen an 8x growth. Monthly-active streamers have grown 5x times, and live-watch hours have scaled 78x times since January 2021.
Esports Premier League has also roped in global premium smartphone brand TECNO Mobile as its presenting sponsor for the second edition of the country’s first franchise-based esports league. TECNO Mobile plans to promote its upcoming smartphone phone, TECNO Pova 3, through the tournament.
This year’s league is set to engage esports athletes across the country in a high-voltage action of the most popular battle royale game, ‘BATTLEGROUNDS MOBILE INDIA (BGMI)’, and carries a prize pool of ?1 crore. The Grand Finals of the league will be hosted via a LAN event, making it the league’s first-ever offline Grand Finals.
Speaking about the partnership, Vishwalok Nath, ESPL Director, commented:
“With shared values and a compelling gaming proposition, we are super excited to team up with India’s leading gaming streaming platform Loco.
“We are pleased to be working together with the team to create interesting and engaging content for the esports fans and the community out there. We are always keen to associate with brands that share the same passion for esports as us and are looking forward to a fruitful association.“
According to the FICCI-EY media and entertainment report of 2022, content creation and concurrent viewership around gaming saw a massive surge in India, and there is also a meteoric rise in esports viewership, having gone from 600,000 hours in 2020 to 2 million hours in 2021.
Ashwin Suresh, Founder, Loco, added:
“Loco will play a pivotal role in growing the fanbase for ESPL and providing yet another entertaining experience for the Indian gaming community. As the exclusive broadcast partner for the league, we will provide fans with tons of exclusive content and a chance to interact with their favourite streamers. We’re excited to partner with the India Today Group on this landmark esports league as we continue to actively support the growth of the esports ecosystem in India.“
The league will be played in two separate stages in the initial phase—online qualifiers and invitational qualifiers—to shortlist the top 16 teams. The first 12 teams, top two teams from the open qualifiers and top ten teams from the invitational qualifiers, will progress directly into the finals.
The teams ranked 3rd to 10th in the online qualifiers and teams ranked 11th to 18th from invitational qualifiers will compete for the other two spots available in the finals. The upcoming edition of India’s premier esports league has already kick-started its online qualifiers.
All matches of the second season will be live-streamed exclusively on the LOCO app and website (loco.gg).
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