F1 Enters eSports Arena With Official Championship

August 22nd, 2017

Author: Michelle Angelline

Category | Automotive

Formula One and eSports?

Formula One has announced its launching an official eSport series to run together with the on-track world championship. This is the first time that F1 has entered the eSport arena. And will be run with official F1 Video Game and the eSports Group Gfinity. The season will be open to all-comers and represents a further move by the Formula One to embrace digital media. This will run from September to the season finale at Abu Dhabi.

The series will hold on the new F1 video game, published by Codemasters. Due the release on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows PC (DVD and via Steam) on Friday, August 25th. And it is available to pre-order now in the F1 Store. The qualification period will be hold in September. The semi-finals will be entering by the 40 fastest drivers at the Gfinity London Arena in October. The top 20 drivers from the semi-finals will entering the three race events in Abu Dhabi at November.

eSports Interest

The interest in eSports has been growing extremely in recent years. A survey revealed that 14% of Americans over the age of 13 are fans of professional gaming. The gaming market research company Newzoo’s latest report also placed the global eSports audience.

Actually, this is not the first time because there have already successful route in gaming. PlayStation and Nissan have successfully making gamers into racing drivers. The Xbox Forza racing championship is now in the third season, the Moto GP also launched their eSport series, which backed by Red Bull and Michelin in May.

McLarren announced earlier this year their World’s Fastest Gamer programme. It’s a competition in which video gamers will compete to win a job as simulator driver for the team.

“The F1 audience is getting older and this is part of how we capture the younger generation,” said Zak Brown, the team’s executive director. “This is how that generation will grow up learning about the sport.”

The Opinion

“This launch presents an amazing opportunity for our business: strategically and in the way we engage fans. First, it’s a growing category with tremendous fan engagement that we’re entering in a big way; and we are proud to have Codemasters and Gfinity joining us on this ride. Of course as we do in Formula 1, we’ll continue to evolve and innovate in the way we run this virtual counterpart to the F1 Championship to ensure we provide the most exciting and enjoyable experience we can for our fans.” said Sean Bratches, Managing Director, Commercial Operations at Formula 1.

We hope this will made fan engagement and embracing digital media in priority. Combining the eSports and F1 racing can make a new enjoyable and exciting experience.

Source : F1

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