Title: eSports News: DGL Launch Event Brings Much Needed Exposure And A Million Rand Event
Author: BiPolarBear
Recovered Author: BiPolarBear
Published Date: 2016-01-22
Original URL: https://geeknode.co.za/2016/01/esports-news-dgl-launch-event-brings-much-needed-exposure-and-a-million-rand-event
Wayback URL: https://web.archive.org/web/20170712183621id_/http://www.geeknode.co.za/2016/01/esports-news-dgl-launch-event-brings-much-needed-exposure-and-a-million-rand-event/
Recovery Confidence: high
Categories: eSports
Tags: DGL, eSports, Masters Series, news, Telkom

- BiPolarBear

- 1 year ago

- 1 0

So eSports huh? The thing that, while incredibly popular, deeply upsets a vocal part of the population. While you may have thought any sort of eSports success only possible outside of Africa, it looks like Telkom wants to up the ante of the local scene by introducing the DGL Masters Series.

Last night Telkom had their launch event for the 2016 Digital Gaming League. Hosted by Paul “ReDeYe” Chaloner, a prominent international shoutcaster, the event aimed to not only announce Telkom’s plans for their DGL Masters Series as well as market the idea of eSports to the local press. While a PR event may not have been what everyone would have wanted from the launch, what Telkom did may be the best thing for local eSports in recent years. Let’s hold that thought though and talk about the more important news to come out of the event.

Telkom has announced that 8 invited teams will compete in South Africa’s largest eSports event, the DGL Masters Series. Not only will the Masters Series feature 8 of the best teams South Africa has to offer, but also boasts a mammoth prize pool of one million rand. Let me reiterate that, the DGL Masters Series boasts a prize pool that rivals some international eSports event. This is incredible for a South African eSports event and while it means incredible development for the top end of South African players, it will be interesting to see how this event affects the rest of the local player base.

The 8 teams that will be competing are as follows:

- Aperture Gaming

- Bravado Gaming

- Carbon Esports

- Damage Control

- Infinity Gaming

- Veneration Esports

- White Rabbit E-sports

- Xperts@Total.Chaos

While this list is mostly made up of DLG Premier League teams, there is rather obvious omission in this list. For those of you that follow the DGL you’ll notice that Energy eSports, a high profile DGL team, seem to have been left out. While it’s not clear yet why this is the case, there are suspicions that the team disagreed with the contract Telkom offered them but we will only know more on that in due time.

This announcement is great and all but they did leave out something rather important. What exactly will these teams be playing? They made this grand announcement, commenting on how they would ensure that the event would be streamed as well as shown on Super Sport, but didn’t make it explicitly clear what they would be playing. While it seems that the teams will be competing in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2, which are two of the most popular games in SA. As much as I may have hoped this whole thing was a Iron man of Gaming like the Nintendo World Championships, it looks like we’re sticking to ‘traditional’ eSports in 2016.

So while, all in all, this was a pretty good event and can only mean some much needed growth for the local scene there are a couple of important observations that need to be made. I want to start off by saying ReDeYe seemed to be able to sell eSports to a crowd that would have overlooked the scene for another year. I don’t think there is a better person to sell eSports and thankfully ReDeYe’s hosting of the DGL Launch means we should see some much needed investment. The next point is rather minor but does need to be noted so that we can fix this it before it spirals out of control. It’s been broadly accepted that the idea of “booth babes” for gaming related events is a huge no-no. So why were there those ladies hanging on to Paul and Enzo’s arms as they went on to the stage? This is probably something that should be thought about before the next event is held, just a suggestion.

In any case, the event went off rather well and looks to be the start of what will be a rather interesting eSports year for South Africa. I hope that we see some incredible growth this year and are able to make a decent impact in international eSports in the near future. Getting the media on our side is the first step, now it’s up to the players to provide some intense competition for everyone to enjoy.

You can watch the whole event below.

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BiPolarBear

Gaming Author at Geek Node

The best person to offer the worst opinion. Paul's interests include adding 100 hour JRPGs to his backlog and dark walks through dungeons. You'll probably find him rambling on about old man Nintendo or that crazy newfangled eSports thingy.

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Article Tags:
DGL · eSports · Masters Series · news · Telkom

Article Categories:
eSports · eSports News
