February 2 – The fledgling eFootball.Pro e-sports league to be played on Konami’s Pro-Evolution Soccer (PES) game has handed its league media rights to the data and content division of Sportradar.
Tagged as the ‘Official International Media Rights Distribution Partner’ Sportradar will commercialise the live rights for the new league’s matches, as well as distribute matchday previews and analysis, highlights, news, and interviews.
Sportradar will take charge of production, including all the live LAN (face-to-face) matches.
Konami announced its hook-up with eFootball.Pro to create an international league last November. eFootball.Pro, founded by Barcelona player Gerard Piqué and owned by the Esports Media Rights (EMR), was founded and is headed by FC Barcelona’s player Gerard Piqué, was tasked with creating the platform for the league. Sportradar has put an agreement in place for other EMR e-sports properties.
eFootball.Pro’s Managing Director Javier Alonso said: “We trust in the quality of the contents produced by Sportradar and its expertise to distribute them. We hope that we together will lay the foundations of the football eSports’ future and bring the spectators a unique and exciting product.”
The race to create credible football-based e-sports leagues is on with Konami running a little behind EA Sports’ FIFA game and its dominance of the space.
In September Konami signed a deal with UEFA Champions League to make its PES League World Tour 2018 the official UEFA Champions League eSports competition. The Pro2018 World Tour will hold a number of offline events starting from winter of 2017 and running until spring of 2018. “The finals will take place in 2018 where the players who have achieved the highest points in the ranking will be qualified to fight for the Finals tournament that will be held in summer of 2018,” said Konami.
PES and UEFA have had a relationship since 2009 with the latest three-year agreement being signed in 2015. PES is the only official video game licensed by UEFA for the Champions League.
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