As seen at:http://www.alisports.com/cn/view_30.html

AliSports’s Inaugural World Electronic Sports Games (WESG): Video Games in an Olympic format

5:28PM, 30 March 2016 — Shanghai: AliSports has officially revealed their eSports division at a Shanghai press conference, also announcing their inaugural World Electronic Sports Games (WESG) tournament as part of their efforts to create an open platform for eSports.

USD 5.5 Million Prize Pool for the inaugural “World Cyber Sports Tournament”

AliSports was formed in September 2015, setting up their eSports divison concurrently. However, the eSports divison was only revealed to the public today. Why? According to AliSports CEO Zhang Da Zhong, eSports has been a very volatile market, experiencing great fluctuations and spikes in the industry to date, more recently managing to establish itself as a center for stable growth after a few market crashes. Under these circumstances, it was absolutely necessary to do market research and groundwork in order to lay the foundation for stable investment and growth, as well as to solve the previous problems plaguing the eSports industry. AliSports, along with other sports industry interest groups(TL Note: probably gambling industries and computer-related industries), have decided to invest in the eSports market after going through 6 months of preparation, and thus we have delayed the announcement of our eSports division until today. Adhering to AliSport’s IP-core (A buzzword for the new trend of Chinese “Internet + Pan Entertainment” type industry — effectively means all online and transmedia type entertainment. For eSports, this concerns the game, livestreaming, and events, etc.) philosophy, Ali Electronic Sports Division has announced a new tournament format: WESG(World Electronic Sports Games). The tournament will attract players from over 100 countries and regions, starting with popular titles such as Dota 2, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void and Hearthstone, with a total prize pool of USD 5.5 million across all titles. The initial investment from AliSports for WESG is expected to be over 100 million yuan (TL:Approx USD 15,427,814).

Establishing the Olympic-standard for eSports regulations

As the first international competition organized by AliSports, this tournament aims to establish a gold standard of rules specific to eSports. The biggest difference between WESG and it’s predecessor, World Cyber Games (WCG), is that other than creating new publishing rights and regulations, the competition will establish a complete and specific set of rules for eSports atheletes, including but not limited to age, nationality, anti-doping regulations, moral etiquette guidelines, with associated penalty and punishment guidelines. AlieSports CEO, Wang Guan, expressed that these rules cross-reference Olympic guidelines and rules, and were set specifically for gamers and gaming. The purpose of these guidelines are to protect the rights of eSports athletes, to maintain the standards and ensure fairness ineSports tournaments, thus contributing to the healthy development of the international eSports scene.

Zhang Da Zhong (CEO, AliSports) said at the press conference: “The essence of eSports is that it is a sport, and it has reconfigured the way we traditionally view sports. eSports thus needs to be protected with a set of unified rules and regulations similar to how other sports are in order to maintain its integrity. Competition, Regulation, Fairness; these concepts are vital to AliSport’s mission.” Da Zhong also added that every sports has its origin in casual play, and therefore AliSports’s involvement in eSports, after setting the required rules and regulations, will be as limited as possible “in order to allow [eSports] to return to its roots, allowing it to develop organically”.

AliSport’s Integrated Online Competition Platform Strategy

On top of organizing WESG, AliSports looks forward to organizing other eSports tournaments, using the integrated AliSports Gaming Platform to facilitate the organization of eSports tournaments, from aspects such as spectator(or user)and player registration, event organization, tournament scheduling, service distribution to content distribution, sponsor contract organization, business development and other affiliated event-related services. Through the standardization and integration of these services in a singular platform, AliSports hopes to organize eSports tournaments more efficiently than before.

The AliSports Gaming Platform will be integrated into the AliGroup ecosystem, allowing the services required to organize eSports tournaments to be accessed easily and effectively. This increased accessibility will grant eSports access to more powerful electronic services(TL: probably gambling, but logistics as well) in every aspect of eSports tournaments. With AliSports Gaming Platform, people will use their real names and thus be able to use the platform’s integrated communications(TL: AKA facebook, or weibo) to connect them with other eSports players as well as fans, giving them a one-stop platform for real-time in-game stats, lifetime competitive stats, also granting access to other integrated services like finance, insurance, education/self development services. eSports clubs can also use the platform to organize and manage their teams, publish press releases, manage sponsorship contracts and business development.

Online, there will be the Platform, and offline, there will be accompanying facilities. In the press conference, AlieSports unveiled an honorary plaque for the AlieSports Center, with AlieSports CEO Zhang Da Zhong granting the official “AlieSports Center” certification to 20 LAN shops in Shanghai, Beijing, and many other major cities (Fuzhou, Chengdu, Xi An, You Yang, Qing Dao are named as well) According to our understanding, AliSports plans to proliferate their certification process to over 1,500 other LAN centers.