lifestyle sport Feature The future of esports in Wales


With a landmark year ahead for the organisation, Hannah Collins speaks to Esports Wales foder oh ackso abot the selectio rocess for ales first atioal team.


This year marks the 50th anniversary of the first known video gaming competition, held at Stanford University in the States with competitors duking it out on Spacewar! – a pioneering game a decade old itself by 1972. The prize? A year’s subscription to Rolling Stone magazine.


Today, esports is a billion-pound industry with millions in both viewership and prize pots up for grabs, having been re-popularised in the 2010s thanks to online streaming platforms like Twitch. Subsequently, esports are being increasingly accepted as separate but equal to traditional sports, with an esports Commonwealth Championship held alongside the regular event in Birmingham this year. And Wales could be among the very first teams to compete.


Esports Wales, headed up by CEO and founder John Jackson, is running its third Welsh Masters tournament to select a national team for the Commonwealth Championship and other major leagues taking place around the world in 2022. Ahead of the event, I spoke to John about what the tournament involves and what lies ahead for the players.


“The Welsh Masters is to select the best players in Wales for various games,” John explains. Those games are Counter- Strike: Global Offensive, Rocket League, eFootball, Tekken 7 and Dota 2. “[The tournament] is normally at this time of


year because it allows us to select players now that will go into a team ready for the international stuff that is coming up, which are the Commonwealth Games and esports Championships. We have the regionals before that and if we’re successful in those, we’ll go on to play Northern Ireland, Scotland, England, as well as a few other regions. We’ll be looking to make a mixed or an open team for anyone to join, and a women’s team.


“On top of that, we’ve also got the European Championships, for which we’ll be looking to send a team to Baku from Thurs 26 Sun-29 May, and then Romania for Counter-Strike from Fri 1- Sun 10 July. Then Montenegro for eFootball, though the date for that hasn’t been confirmed yet, and then Albania on Tue 20 Sun-25 Sept for our Dota 2 team. Following on from that we’ll be looking at sending the team to Bali for the World Championships in November.


“So, the Welsh Masters is just the start of it. If someone wants to play for Wales, this is the way to go about it if they want to show what they can do on a world stage. they’re quite competitive [tournaments] and we’re very much underdogs. This is the first year we’ve competed in some of them as Wales. It’s good to get the national team out there and hopefully replicate some of the passion we get for sports like rugby.”


Though having esports and traditional


sports sharing the same stages remains hotly debated, progress has already been made. South East Asia, the epicentre of modern esports, has made the most strident steps towards legitimising the ‘sport’ of competitive gaming by hosting mixed tournaments since 2007.


upcoming Commonwealth Championship, meanwhile, is reportedly a trial run for potentially incorporating esports into the main Games as early as 2026.


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Whatever the future of esports vs. traditional sports is, these possibilities certainly mean the iron is hot for the Welsh and British teams to strike, and John is focused on taking the big leagues in his stride. “Wales is a small country, so it’s always going to be difficult going up against larger ones where they’ve got a bigger player pool to pick from.


“It’s going to be exciting from my point of view, and from a player’s point of view, it’s going to be quite chilled because this is the first time they’re doing it at this level so there’s not a massive expectation for them to perform at the highest level. There are going to be a lot of things we’ll have to learn from and develop to see how we can do it better next time.”


Read a longer version of this article on buzzmag.co.uk. The Welsh Masters runs until Sat 9 Apr. Info: esportswales.org


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