ONE Esports to debut with events in Tokyo, Jakarta, and Singapore

Global esports revenues are expected to hit $1.1 billion in 2019, a jump of 27% from last year. Such numbers coupled with the recent success of the Fortnite World Cup is enough to attract any business mind, and Asian sports media property ONE Championship is no different. Just think that ONE Championship is investing $ 50m into esports.

Earlier this week, ONE Championship revealed the launch events for its new esports venture, ONE Esports. In all, they announced four events for the 2019-20 season, including one each in Singapore and Jakarta, and two in Tokyo. As per their announcement, they will be organizing Dota 2 World Invitational Events in Singapore and Jakarta in December 2019 and April 2020, respectively. Both these events will have a prize pool of US$500,000 each.

© ONE Esports

In Tokyo, as part of ONE Championship’s 100th event, the event will host a Tekken 7 and Street Fighter V tournament in October this year. The event will allow members of the fighting games community to compete with top 9 fighting games esports professionals in a 3 v 3 team format. As per a LinkedIn post by Chairman and CEO at ONE Championship – Chatri Sityodtong, ONE Esports will take help of the production company PGL Esports to organize the upcoming events. PGL, previously, has hosted Dota 2 events like the Kuala Lumpur Major and Manila Major.

Additionally, ONE Championship also named Carlos Alimurung as the CEO of ONE Esports. Alimurung is a former chief business officer for Battlefy, and has also worked at Univision and LG North America. “The opportunity to build a multibillion dollar esports business in Asia is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity…… The team is very strong, and I’m excited to incorporate their ideas and energy to execute our strategy,” Alimurung said in a press release.

ONE Championship, which launched in 2011 and has raised over $250 million to date, announced its intention to enter esports in November last year. The company no doubt has loads of experience behind it, but esports is a different category. It will be interesting to see if it enjoys the same level of success here as well.