The NBC Sports Group division of US media company NBCUniversal has made its first major entry into esports by partnering with online competitive gaming platform FACEIT and games developer Psyonix to launch a new tournament.
The competition will launch this summer utilising FACEIT’s platform and numerous NBCU and Comcast regional, national and international assets, allowing gamers of all skill levels to compete in a 2v2 Rocket League tournament for a $100,000 (€89,261) prize pool.
Players who enter the first-of-its-kind tournament will play early rounds on FACEIT, which will also serve as the official tournament operator. The featured game for the property’s debut season will be Rocket League, the sports-action game which is developed and published by San Diego-based studio, Psyonix.
The tournament’s structure will utilise NBC Sports regional networks, Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo Deportes and NBCU International to run the regional qualifiers across the US and in Europe through game-play, which will be played on the FACEIT platform beginning on July 22.
The Regional Finals will be played at NBC Sports regional networks studios on the weekends of August 5-6 and August 12-13, and will be live-streamed on the NBC Sports app and Telemundo En Vivo app, as well as other social media platforms. Participating NBC Sports regional networks will televise the final hour of coverage from each of the Regional Finals.
The Grand Finals will feature 16 total teams competing on August 26-27 for the inaugural title and the $100,000 prize pool, which will be televised live in the US on NBCSN. The Grand Finals will also be broadcast on Syfy in the UK, Germany, Australia and multiple countries across Latin America, in addition to all previously listed streaming outlets.
In addition to live-streaming and linear coverage, video-on-demand content from the Regional Finals and Grand Finals will be available on various digital and social channels across the NBC Sports regional networks, NBCSN, Telemundo Deportes, FACEIT and Rocket League.
Rob Simmelkjaer, senior vice-president of NBC Sports Ventures, told the Mashable website: “We looked at lots of different games in lots of different genres. We ultimately landed on Rocket League for a number of reasons. Number one, it's growing at a nice clip. We see its audiences are growing. It's got great buzz out there; the (Rocket League Championship Series) did pretty well this summer.
“Number two, we thought that it had some sports DNA to it, which would be a good fit for us and for our audience — our sports-loving audience. It's obviously got this sort of soccer mash-up with motorsports, which are sports that we cover extensively on NBC Sports Network.
“We figured someone who is used to tuning into one of our networks for baseball, basketball, hockey games, soccer games, or a motorsport race would look at this this and say, 'Oh, this is interesting, it's cars playing soccer.’ We thought there would be some translatability to the non-core esports fan with the game.”