FRENCH MEDIA COMPANY BUYS ESWC
ESWC 2015 (Photo: ESWC)
TNL Take: At least we got Monday off.
After the slew of eSports investments over the past two weeks
- 76ers and Dignitas/Apex
- aXiomatic and Team Liquid
- Ajax Becomes 13th EU Team With Investment
- DJ Steve Aoki Invests In Rogue
the pace is not slowing down.
French company Webedia announced that they are acquiring Oxent, owner of both ESWC, Electronic Sports World Cup, and Toornament, an eSports tournament platform, as well as involvement with top Ligue 1 Team PSG. Webedia has partnerships and JV's in Gaming with IGN, Gamestar and GamePro.
My High School French is pretty poor as well so let's translate what that means:
/01 ESWC
ESWC 2015 (Photo: ESWC)
ESWC is one of Europe's oldest eSports tournaments dating back to 2003 as well as the largest in France.
ESWC has also passed through a number of hands after being originally created by French company, Ligarena. In 2009, ESWC was sold to Games-Solution, which was then bought by Oxent in 2012 and now owned by Webedia in 2016.
/02 TOORNAMENT
Toornament and MLG (Photo: Toornament)
Toornament is an eSports tournament platform similar to Faceit or Battlefy.
Toornament was one of the earliest platforms launching back in 2014. They've recently powered major tournaments from League of Legends to Events like MLG Columbus.
/03 PSG FC
Ligue 1 Pro Team PSG FC
Now here is where it gets really interesting.
Between Webedia's Media properties, the value of both Events (ESWC) and Platform (Toornament) becomes obvious.
Now take this a step further.
Webedia also invested in Bang Bang Management, an eSports Athlete representation company which coincidentally represents.....EA FIFA Athletes.
I can't paint the picture more clearly.
Combined with all of those assets, Webedia is now advising PSG FC on their eSports strategy.