Music has the Grammys, film has Oscars, and esports… well, esports has The Esports Awards. For five years running the awards have been given to influential and impressive names in the esports industry. A unique variety of different categories are created and new categories are added each year. Just like the Oscars.
We’ve been following the entire Esports Awards process through nominations, voting and the main ceremony all the way back from when they were first announced. Now, lets take a look at the main winners and the key stories from this year’s event.
© The Esports Awards 2020
The Esports Awards 2020 contains dozens of categories. From creative ones like esports cosplay of the year or esports content series of the year, to industry awards like esports publisher of the year. Of course, a number of categories for pro players and esports organizations are given out as well. Several new categories have been added this year paying homage to casters, analysts and content teams.
This year’s nominees included streamers like Nickmercs, Pokimane, xQc, Asmongold, Summit1G, and that’s just for the Streamer of the Year category. The Mobile Game of the Year category included titles like PUBG Mobile, CoD Mobile, Arena of Valor and Brawl Stars. Both LEC on-air talents Sjokz and Froskurin were nominated for Esports Personality of the Year as well as G2’s Carlos ‘Ocelote’ Rodriguez.
Industry categories vary from selecting the best commercial partner of the year to the best esports game of the year.
Plenty of lucky people received their awards. Among them, Team Secret who were awarded esports team of the year. It perfectly aligned with our award of Uncrowned Champions of 2020. The Dota 2 team lead by Puppey won two of the biggest events of the year – the DL Season 13 and later the OMEGA League: Europe division.
The esports mobile game of the year award was given to the game FreeFire – it is especially popular in LatAm and Asia. Publisher of the year was given to Riot Games, and commercial partner of the year to Logitech – all big names that didn’t really surprise most people who were watching the awards ceremony.
Meanwhile, Latin American fans were incredibly excited as a significant number of nominees were from the region, really drawing attention to the many talented people there.
Two of the three top streamers of the year (winner Ibai and 3rd placed Gaules) are from LatAm, with 2nd placed Mortal being from India. With over 765.000 votes tallied, that’s a huge number of fans that came out to support their favourite streamers!
In the end, Ibai’s reaction was simply priceless.
Finally, the Esports Awards Host of the Year award deservedly went to Eefje ‘Sjokz’ Depoortere, LoL’s favorite personality. We hope that takes care the “impostor syndrome” queen.
For a number of the categories, you can already vote for your favorites! A new set of categories will also become available today (30th September) at 8pm BST.
Five of the community categories were already listed for well over a month and open for the public to vote. The remaining categories are slowly being rolled out by the organizers, and for some you can submit your own nominations still. You do have to however, provide an explanation on why you are submitting the person or group as a candidate!
The evaluation period is October to October, and who was the best in the 12 months between October 19 and October 20! In addition to the public vote and nominations, there is also a panel vote. The panel will decide on any possible tie breakers and finalise the selection and finalists.
Then, the last part of the process happens – the actual award ceremony!
Last weekend, the much-anticipated esports went down – and 32 awards were handed out! A full live show was streamed on Twitch, with nominees, presenters and fans all joining in to watch remotely. The Esport Supply LiveCGI team actually went and modeled an entire ‘fake’ studio for the esports awards – done entirely in CGI.
Physical venues were off the cards for us this year for obvious reasons, but @LiveCGI from Esport Supply did an incredible with this incredible CGI studio pic.twitter.com/lqCHOMHeEp
— Esports Awards (@esportsawards) November 24, 2020
.Despite the remote-only event, participants had a lot of fun, and recipients of the awards received their trophies and gifts pretty quickly – and fans also had a great time of it. Some of them even took the opportunity to parrot certain political happenings at the moment:
I’ve heard that trucks full of EE votes mysteriously disappeared from the @esportsawards. I'm currently working with @esportslaw to block the certification of @TheCSA
ⓘ 𝗢𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗲
— Adam Apicella (@MrAdamAp) November 21, 2020
Surrounding the awards, there are also some fun other events. In a partnership with the For The Gamers, the Esports Awards and eFuse are offering $10.000 to someone who is right on the cusp of excelling in esports but lacks the funds to do so. There are no restrictions on what type of success it is – a business idea or even an esports facility or something else still. Anyone can apply with their pitch, and three finalists will be selected in October for a series of interviews before the winner is awarded the money.
We will post future updates about Esports Awards 2021 , as well as the process on how to get involved!
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