The Eredivisie, the top division of Dutch club football, has partnered with esports event organiser DreamHack with the goal of creating the world’s leading EA Sports Fifa 20 league.
The Eredivisie first launched its eDivisie league in January 2017 and has brought in DreamHack, a subsidiary of esports and gaming entertainment company Modern Times Group, to scale up the competition.
The eDivisie acts as a qualifying event for the Fifa Global Series and the Eredivisie and DreamHack said they intend their partnership to transform the competition into a live-produced, full-scale league, with fans attending the games and a prize pool of at least €100,000 ($110,000).
The two parties said the Netherlands is one of the strongest markets in Europe for Electronic Arts’ Fifa game series with more than two million Dutch people playing a Fifa title for more than 10 hours monthly. The eDivisie is also said to be the biggest national Fifa league in the world based on its social media following of 174,000 followers on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
Peter Nørrelund, co-chief executive of DreamHack and MTG executive vice-president and head of product development and incubation, said: “Eredivisie and the Dutch football clubs have been engaged in esports for some time and have built a strong foundation with their Fifa league, eDivisie.
“Several of the world’s top Fifa players are Dutch and millions of Dutch gamers play Fifa on a regular basis, so we believe that the Netherlands has a huge potential of being an absolute front-running country in competitive Fifa.”
