October 19 – Alisports, the sports arm of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, has signed a deal with Happy Valley (HVAA), a Hong Kong first division club, to promote Alisports’ esports World Electronic Sports Games (WESG) event.
October 12 – Premier League Manchester City have partnered with top esports team Epsilon for the Gfinity Elite Series.
October 11 – Denmark’s Superliga is launching its own esports championship with the top tier clubs set to begin play in the eSuperliga on November 5.
October 10 – Serial Scottish champions Celtic are set to test their league dominance skills internationally and join the eFootball.Pro eSports league alongside FC Barcelona, Schalke 04 and AS Monaco.
October 9 – Premier League West Ham, one of the first English clubs to sign professional esports players, will also be one of the first to host their own esports tournament with online qualifiers open now.
October 9 – The football esports calendar is becoming as crowded as the match schedules for clubs and players. FIFA and EA Sports, hard on the heels of the success of the 2018 eWorld Cup, have announced the schedule for 2019 FIFA 19 Global Series.
By Paul Nicholson
October 5 – The English Premier League are entering the esports business with the launch of ePremier League with league partner Electronic Arts. The ePL will be played on the FIFA19 game and operated by esports tournament organisers Gfinity.
September 24 – Norwegian video gamers are competing for places in the country’s national team with a view to forming a squad to play in organised eSport competition under the national team banner, as well as at any future European or World Championships.
September 21 – The build-up to the launch of the FIFA 19 video game from EA Sports is in full swing with Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar and Kylian Mbappe starring in a new ad for the game tagged ‘Champions Rise’ that goes on sale September 28.
September 21 – The football eSports market is opening up in Germany with Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 clubs to get the opportunity to compete against each other via a DFL (Deutsche Fußball Liga) competition for a German championship title.
September 17 – UEFA is exploring options for the launch an official e-sports tournament around EURO 2020, requesting expressions of interest from firms who could “create, develop and operate an official e-sports tournament”.
August 13 – The future of FIFA is looking more and more digital. Electronic Arts, makers of the FIFA 18 video game, have revealed that there were more than 29 million views across online platforms during the three-day finals in event earlier this month.
August 7 – Monaco is the third club to officially announce it is entering a professional eSports team in the Konami-backed eFootball.Pro league. Monaco join already announced FC Barcelona and Schalke 04 for the inaugural season.
August 6 – Saudi Arabia may have collapsed at Russia 2018 but their fast-fingered eSports champion Mosaad ‘Msdossary’ Aldossary struck a blow for the country hammering Belgium’s Stefano ‘StefanoPinna’ Pinna 4-0 in the final of the FIFA eWorld Cup at London’s O2 Arena on Saturday.
August 3 – Football per se may not have come home but the FIFA eWorld Cup, a virtual version of the real thing, kicked off in London on Thursday with players from all around battling to be crowned the world’s best FIFA 18 player on a digital stage.