The Farming Simulator League is an official, fully fledged esports league for the agricultural sim, with ten tournaments planned across Europe. This is following a successful first season of the Farming Simulator Championship in 2018. Yes, that was a thing. Through the season, a prize pool of $175,000 (150,000€) is up for grabs, with an additional 100,000€ in prizes for the Farming Simulator Champion – equal to a total of almost $284,000 in prize money.

The new league will be held in Farming Simulator 19 with a brand new 3v3 competitive mode, moving on from last year’s bale stacking competition. The Farming Simulator League will retain “real field work like harvesting”, combined with challenging game elements to raise the stakes. The final event will take place at publisher GIANT Software’s FarmCon in the summer of 2020. Compared to previous Farming Simulator esports events – which had a prize pool of around $3.4K – agricultural esports is clearly becoming a more competitive scene than ever.

“We have a unique opportunity”, explained Christian Ammann, the CEO of GIANTS Software, commenting that “competitive farming is something people enjoy for years now, but it hasn’t been done in eSports so far.” GIANTS Software has partnered with Logitech G, Intel, Noblechairs, and Nitrado to facilitate the upcoming Farming Simulator League events.

According to an interview with Ammann from the Esports Observer, we might also see “semi-professional esports teams” be introduced into the Farming Simulator League, although he is keen to avoid conflicts of interest with sponsorship from farm-tech manufacturers. While agricultural esports might not be on the same level as the Overwatch League, the first ten days of release for Farming Simulator 19 saw 10 million sales, demonstrating the popularity of the genre.

The Farming Simulator League joins a growing number of esports championships with immense popularity across the world – so much so, that last year it was considered as a potential Olympics category, but was eventually deemed too violent for the sporting competition.