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Trackhouse Racing’s Ross Chastain credited a maneuver he used in NASCAR 2005 for the Nintendo GameCube for his finish at Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Martinsville that vaulted him into the final four for this weekend’s championship race at Phoenix. According to The NPD Group, a much-younger Chastain was one of fewer than 100,000 folks who bought a copy of that game for Nintendo’s platform. -- Jason Wilson
ESL Faceit Group made good on its promise to bring a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive major to Brazil, and Twitch viewership for the start of the event reflected the pent-up demand in South America's largest country.
The Intel Extreme Masters Rio Major 2022, which began Monday and ends Nov. 13, sold out, has gotten a boost from Brazilian esports legend Alexandre "Gaules" Borba, who has been co-streaming the event on Twitch, with his broadcasts averaging around 100,000 viewers and peaking well over 350,000, per data from Esports Charts. That has helped the event average 450,000 viewers to date, with a peak of around 752,000 on Oct. 31. July's IEM Cologne Major averaged 276,763 viewers during its run, with a peak of 1,249,426 viewers for FaZe Clan's win over Natus Vincere.
While the start has been strong, the CS:GO Major now takes on some stiff competition this weekend in the League of Legends World Championship (Twitch) and the end of Overwatch League Finals (YouTube).
The OWL Finals’ average is more than 192,000 viewers and peaked at over 280,000 on Wednesday, compared to an average of 84,631 viewers and a peak of 134,320 in 2021.League of Legends Worlds is still running strong, with over 864,000 average viewers (compared to 1,298,219 in 2021) as the league gets ready to crown its champion Saturday. -- Kevin Hitt
Fans pack the arena at IEM Rio, the first Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major in Brazil
Adela Sznajder/ESPAT
Reception to the release of new Overwatch and Call of Duty games is likely a good sign for Activision Blizzard's franchised esports leagues.
There is already evidence backing up stronger in interest in the Overwatch League, as the Nov. 2 playoff matchup between the San Francisco Shock and Shanghai Dragons peaked at just over 280,000 viewers, the highest figure since the league’s move to YouTube in 2020. It’s also almost 100,000 more than the grand finals got in 2020. That OWL figure comes after Activision released the game's latest iteration, Overwatch 2, to the public on Oct. 4. OWL head Sean Miller told SBJ his outfit “couldn't be happier."
Activision will look to repeat that streaming success when Call of Duty League returns on Dec. 15. The league's fourth season comes on the heels of the release of the Modern Warfare II reboot on record, which had the best opening weekend ($800 million) of any Call of Duty mainline game, topping 2011's Modern Warfare II ($650 million). -- Hunter Cooke
Driven by the launches of FIFA 23 and Madden 23 in Q3, Electronic Arts recorded a quarterly net profit of $299 million for the three-month period ended Sept. 30. The EA player network has grown to more than 600 million active accounts, with more than 200 million players engaged with EA Sports games.
That growth was fueled by the most successful launch in the FIFA franchise history, which saw 10.3 million playing the new FIFA 23 within the first week. In addition, engagement with the game is enhanced by people watching others play the game. EA CEO Andrew Wilson shared that “we get 2 billion or 3 billion hours of play in FIFA a year, and we get nearly as much of that watching FIFA gameplay.”
EA completes its content strategy for the FIFA franchise with a mobile and online version, which primarily target foreign markets. Like the franchise’s main game, both additional versions added to EA’s growth with daily and monthly active users for FIFA Mobile (75% are located outside of North America and Europe) more than doubling compared to last year and FIFA Online delivering a record performance in Asia.
But the FIFA 23 launch marks the end of an era, as it will be the last title of the franchise under EA auspices, as FIFA ended its long-running right agreement with EA. The publisher will continue making a soccer title, looking to rebrand its franchise to EA Sports FC in 2023. -- Tobias Seck
Jack Grealish is among the popular players in FIFA's lucrative Ultimate Team mode
EA Sports
SBJ for its magazine cover story this week went deep on the bottomless coffers of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, and one space that is already seeing massive disruption from those funds in esports
Saudi Arabia has made big-time investments in some companies -- and outright acquiring others. By “investing to elevate the Kingdom & uplift the world,” as it put it in a recent statement, Saudi Arabia is trying to show that it can be the center of technological advancement, including gaming and esports.
Last month, the Saudi Esports Federation announced it was joining the country’s Vision 2030, with the goal of investing $38 billion to become a global hub in esports and gaming. The PIF, via Savvy Gaming Group, has already invested over $1 billion in esports and gaming and now owns the largest tournament organization through its ESL Faceit Group.
Savvy Gaming Group’s investments include:
- ESL Faceit Group: This $1.5 billion acquisition brought three of the largest esports tournament organizers under one umbrella, becoming the largest of its kind in the industry. ESL, Faceit and DreamHack (an ESL property) have consistently hosted the world’s most prestigious tournaments and leagues, including majors for both Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2.
- Embracer Group: Savvy in June invested $1 billion in the Swedish video game and media holding company, which itself has made a slew of acquisitions over the past several years. Embracer snapped up companies such as Gearbox Entertainment (Borderlands series), Coffee Stain (Valheim, Goat Simulator) and THQ Nordic, and it now owns over 100 gaming studios with more than 200 games in development.
- Nintendo: Savvy said it purchased a 5% stake in the company (valued at $1 billion) “for investment purposes."
Beyond Savvy, the PIF has its own investments, such as an estimated 5% stake in Capcom (Street Fighter series), and around 5% of Nexon (another video game publisher). Each of those investments are also reportedly worth just more than $1 billion. -- Kevin Hitt
- Rebels Gaming, owned by Manchester United’s David de Gea, has acquired the spot in the League of Legends Superliga left by the departure of G2 Arctic.
- Neymar Jr. content is coming to PUBG with its next update, Nov. 9 for PC and Nov. 17 for consoles. This includes customized billboards, soccer boards and special care packages themed on the Brazilian soccer star.
- 2K Games added “Ballin” from rapper A Boogie wit da Hoodie (Julius Dubose) to NBA 2K23 from his upcoming album, Me vs. Myself. Musicians have coveted getting spots in games like NBA 2K and Madden NFL, which provides a new platform for people to discover their music.
- Team Vitality launched a heavy metal Counter-Strike: Global Offensive song, Metality, with Matt “Kichi Chaos” Heafy and music label Nuclear Blast. This is the first song in a long-term collaboration between Nuclear Blast and Team Vitality.
- Chris Ross is the new Global Head of Event Marketing at Riot Games, arriving after more than two years as the director of experiential marketing at Activision.
- Wyatt Chamlin was named publisher and partnership manager at Belong Gaming.
- Mobile Global Esports, which runs a platform for collegiate esports in India, hired event producer Kim Meltzer as managing director.
- The L.A. Times this week went deep on Team Liquid and its operations.
- Ninja in Pyjamas has a new deal with FILA for gaming-themed sportswear.
- Epic Games has a new partnership with Ralph Lauren for in-game content in Fortnite.
- Populous officially showed off one of its latest college projects, the Butler Esports Park, which is a 7,500-square-foot space at the Big East school in Indianapolis.
- Riot Games is hosting 50 students and staff from the Bay Area nonprofit Gamesheads at this weekend’s League of Legends World Championships at Chase Center in San Francisco. Gameheads gives low-income youth laptops, tablets and other software and tech to learn game development.
- Over two million fans turned into the T1 vs. JDG semifinals match of the League of Legends World Championship on Saturday, according to data from Esports Charts.