WHEN it comes to Australian esports, there are seemingly endless obstacles.

We have plenty of talent in our local scene, but the tyranny of distance combined with a smaller population (and therefore audience) means it’s just incredibly difficult for players and teams to break through on the global stage.

The few that have been able to do it, though, can reap the rewards. And the best local team in tactical shooter Rainbow Six Siege is a prime example.

Remember when Manchester City bought A-League team Melbourne Heart? Imagine that, but then imagine that Heart team was dropped into the English Premier League. And then had a shot at winning it.

That’s (sort of) the story of Fnatic, one of the biggest organisations in esports, picking up the Australian team formerly known as Mindfreak.

They broke through by stunning the world at the Six Invitational back in February. It was a 16-team event and often these global events have an Australian representative almost as a hand-out; a ‘sure, you guys can have a chance, but best of luck actually winning a match’ sort of thing.

Etienne ‘Magnet’ Rousseau, a Rainbow Six Siege player for Fnatic, on previous team Mindfreak. Source: Supplied

But Mindfreak stunned Team Liquid - another one of the world’s biggest esports organisations - at that event to make the top two of their group and finish in the top eight of the event.

That got them on the radar of Fnatic - a Britain-based organisation with nine teams spreading across the world’s top esports titles.

Funnily enough, Fnatic has Australian roots, through chairman and founder Sam Mathews. He lived in Australia until he was 17; and when he wanted to start Fnatic at 19, he needed help.

Enter his mum, still living in Australia, who became Fnatic’s chief financial officer. Thus, Fnatic became an Australian company.

“It’s always been a tough thing, where we’ve wanted to support Australia, but most of the time it’s been pretty hard because either it’s not a dense population of gamers or everything is prohibiting esports - internet connections, flight travel, all of that stuff,” Mathews told Foxsports.com.au.

“So having this opportunity to pick up a team that’s doing so well in the region and has a great shot globally is super good for us.”

Esports borrows from some traditional sports in that one brand, or organisation, can feature in many different codes. Think soccer powerhouses Real Madrid having a basketball team, or AFL side Collingwood having both a netball squad and an AFLW team under their umbrella.

When looking to invest in esports, Fnatic categorises games into two tiers - the elite games, like Dota 2, League of Legends or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and then the next bunch. Those games might be smaller now, but have the potential to grow.

Fnatic founder and chairman Sam Mathews. Source: Supplied

“Rainbow Six is a new game for us; we see a lot of potential there. The fanbase seems pretty passionate and engaged,” Mathews said.

“For us, when we’re going into a new game, we want to make a decision on whether we see growth potential. Do we see this as something that can become a true global esports title, bringing in fans and potential viewership numbers?

“We try and be a global brand - we have a team in Southeast Asia for Dota, teams in Europe in many different regions, we have academies in the US and so on. So one of the areas we haven’t covered is our home turf - Australia, and APAC in general.”

With that spread, Fnatic then is able to have expansive facilities and support structures for its teams.

“For example the League of Legends team in Berlin, we have a gaming house, a training facility separate to that, it has coaches, analysts, players have their own apartments,” Mathews said.

“Right now we don’t have a training facility set up in Australia or anything like that, but if the viewership and interest keeps growing, then we’d 100 per cent be doing that.

“We currently have them in Kuala Lumpur, Berlin and Sweden, and we have boot camp stations in Los Angeles where teams can go and boot camp from.”

Then there’s the management structure. Patrik ‘cArn’ Sattermon, a former star Counter-Strike player, has the enviable title of Chief Gaming Officer.

“We have a team director, a team manager and then a coach. Depending on how advanced a team is they’ll maybe have all three, or just a team manager and a coach,” Mathews explained.

“A team director is like a CEO for our big games; they act as their own little units, and each of them are being the managers like a football team’s manager. And then we have our CGO, chief gaming officer, Patrik, who manages all of the games.”

All of this is now behind the Aussies who are competing at the Rainbow Six Siege Pro League Finals this weekend in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Fnatic's Australian Rainbow Six Siege team. Back row: Daniel ‘NeophyteR’ An, Matthew ‘Acez’ Mc Henry, Jason ‘Lusty’ Chen. Front row: Ethan ‘RizRaz’ Wombwell, Etienne ‘Magnet’ Rousseau. Source: Supplied

It’s a level of support that few organisations can provide - globally, that is, never mind just in Australia.

“It’s huge for the Australian scene, it can’t be overstated enough how big Fnatic picking up an Australian team is,” team manager and coach Jayden ‘Dizzle’ Saunders told foxsports.com.au.

“It was definitely unexpected. We had our success over at the Six Invitational in Canada and made top eight in the world, and were lining up to compete in the APAC LAN for our spot in Atlantic City. I think we were a few days out from that and we were in talks.

“They’re giving us more support than anybody in more ways than one. Being able to dedicate more of our time to be able to do this, the international support, as well as from our sponsors.”

It allows players like Etienne ‘Magnet’ Rousseau to take his esports career to the next level.

Often in Australia, even the top players in the local scene will essentially be part-timers, because the money just isn’t there.

That’s not the case for Magnet any more.

“Even though I’ve been playing ‘professionally’ and doing all this stuff with uni and work, Fnatic has come in and given me enough support that I can stop working and focus on playing Siege professionally,” he said.

“It’s been a massive difference in my life and has really helped me and the team grow; I can dedicate a lot more time to the game.”

Fnatic has given the team the ability to boot camp in the US for more than a week before the event itself that they’re there to compete at.

That’s crucial not just to get acclimatised to the time zone, but to get in valuable practice time against the other top teams.

Scrimmages (or scrims, as they’re shortened to in esports) are vital for even the best teams to get a sense of where opposition sides are at and what the style of game they like to play, or meta, is.

When based in Australia, teams often just can’t practice against the world’s best teams because of internet speeds or more specifically ‘ping’ - how fast you get a response from your connection when you do something online.

In gaming in particular, timing is so vital that a poor ping makes it almost unplayable. Imagine trying to kick a footy but your leg moves a second after you tell it to; that’s poor ping.

IEM Sydney, a major CS:GO tournament, took place earlier this month. It was Australia’s biggest ever esports event. Source: Supplied

Partially because of their international success and partially thanks to the kindness of opposing teams, Fnatic has been able to scrim with top sides before and after travelling to the US.

“Some of the NA teams have allowed us to scrim them. Obviously ping is a big factor, it’s a struggle for a lot of teams to scrim us - it’s not fun,” Ethan ‘RizRaz’ Wombwell said.

“But a huge shoutout to the teams who do because it allows us to see what the international scene is like. We’re able to prepare, learn and adapt to the way they play the game, and it gives us a bit of a step forward when it comes to these international events.

“We have a clear understanding of what it’s like to play them instead of just playing Australian teams and learning our meta within our region.”

It makes sense for those teams to do so because they’re learning from Fnatic, too.

“Even the teams that won’t scrim us - the European teams are probably the hardest, given the distance, and we have the highest ping to them. It just isn’t feasible realistically. But they’re always the first to message us and book our time when we’re here (at an international event),” Dizzle said.

“They’ll say, look, we can’t really do it online, but we’ll book you in when we’re here. We don’t really come in as outcasts any more picking up any scrim we can get. People are coming to us and we’re sometimes first cab off the rank.

“We’re included. We’re not that region that’s been added on, we’re included in the whole global family.”

While the Rainbow Six Siege group isn’t one of Fnatic’s tier one teams, they have been provided new equipment and a boot camp, plus they have access to the organisations’ global resources like a mental coach and analysts.

And all of this comes at a very exciting time for Australian esports. At the CS:GO event IEM Sydney earlier this month, a number of locally-based teams stunned favoured international rivals, while US-based, Aussie-fueled side Renegades made it to the quarter-finals.

AFL team Essendon recently acquired an esports team. Picture: Ian Currie Source: News Corp Australia

“We’ve started to see a trend where Australian teams can be more competitive internationally; I think that’s because they’re getting a chance to go and train against the top teams.” Sam Mathews said.

“You’ve seen it in Counter-Strike, teams like Renegades doing really well internationally.

“Australia has always been good at sports; there’s a good level of hand-eye co-ordination and dedication to sport there, and I think esports is going to be no different, overachieving for the population size.”

In an eight-team, single-elimination tournament this weekend, Fnatic has a great chance to impress. In the first round they face a team they know well - the team they beat to make a name for themselves.

“There’s a lot of pressure on us to make it out of the first round - we played Liquid in the Six Invitational and beat them there, we shocked the world with that,” Rizraz said.

“And then we get matched up against them in the first round here. It adds a lot of pressure to make sure we do beat them just to back ourselves up from our Six Invitational showing.”

But with the sort of backing that few Aussie esports teams have ever received, there’s every chance they’ll do it. And more.