Esports tourney attracts prize money of ₹1 crore

Promoters of Cobx Gaming are offering a prize money of Rs. 1 crore for a South East Asian (SEA) Esports (Video Games playing) tournament to be run in two phases.

Rajdip Gupta and Mujahid Rupani, promoters of Cobx Masters. Photo: Special Arrangement

Paris has shown interest to include Esports at the Summer Olympics in 2024, but IOC chief Thomas Bach said, “not so fast.”

Esports – video games playing – is becoming popular in Asia and promoters of Cobx Gaming are offering a prize money of Rs. 1 crore for a South East Asian (SEA) tournament to be run in two phases.

The first phase will be held in April and it will involve teams from Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Kohima.

“The online qualifier for each of these 10 cities will be followed by a final stage, which will be held in a cafe in the respective city. The final stage will have the top four teams from the qualifiers, competing for the title in each of the cities. The prize money will be distributed over two games - CS:GO and DOTA 2. It is going to be exciting,” said Mujahid Rupani, Co-founder of Cobx Gaming .

‘Nascent’

Rajdip Gupta, co-founder of the promoter company said: “The primary objective of conducting the tournament is to attract the maximum number of professional teams in India. Esports is still in a nascent stage here and we want to help streamline it. We have designed the format carefully so as to address the long-standing viewership issue, ensuring the tournament reaches the maximum possible audience. We hope to demonstrate to this audience that gaming can be a lucrative career option, not just for young gamers, but also for talented individuals who are a part of this industry.”

According to the promoters, there are 250 million Indian gamers with an audience of more than 30 million.