Mentioned in this article Games: Hearthstone, Overwatch

This Friday, France gets mainstream esports. The best French players of FIFA16 will play in the E-Football League, co-produced by Media365 and L’Equipe 21.

L’Equipe 21 is a media network that runs a free TV channel in France, specialised in sports. It teamed up with Media365, a TV production company led by Bertrand Amar, one of the earliest promoters of video-game entertainment in French TV.

The E-Football League will consist of 20 players, competing every Friday until June 3. Games will not be live but instead recorded a few days in advance. Each week, four games will be played in l’Equipe 21’s studios, commented and broadcasted in full length, the other six games will be played online and highlighted. Scheduled between 8:45 PM and 10:30, the show will also include larger esports news.

It’s prime time!

E-Football League is nothing new. To name only two recent news about TV and esports, BBC broadcasted the League of Legends finals live and TBS already announced their Counter-Strike league to be TV broadcasted this summer. Esports already made its appearance on French TV too. L’Equipe 21 and Media365 organizing their own tournament and broadcasting it in prime time every week, however, is a major step. But how come l’Equipe 21 decides to take it?

Last November, L’Equipe 21 broadcast the FIFA tournament organised by the Electronic Sports World Cup. It was one week after the games took place but despite the delay the sports channel had very good results. “We had twice the expected audience for this block,” explains Fabrice Jouhaud, CEO of l’Equipe 21, “almost 200 000 live viewers on average during the program.” These TV ratings encouraged the TV channel to go further. With a prime time broadcast every Friday, l’Equipe is setting the bar high for esports. “It’s an important block, anything on prime time is important. At the same time on other channels, there is already successful programs we will have to compete with.”

Are we sports now?

If l’Equipe 21’s catch phrase is “the first channel 100% sports, 100% free,” and l’Equipe 21 is having an esport event, then it can only mean esports are considered a sport by l’Equipe 21. There are, however, some withholdings. So far, l’Equipe 21 only considers showing sports simulation games like FIFA, rather than titles like Counter-Strike and League of Legends. ”We are talking to a general public, so we do what our main focus is: sports. It doesn’t mean we despise other games though,” explains Fabrice Jouhaud, “If the show is a success, other kinds of games could be considered, but we are not there yet.”

Additionally, E-Football League is an opportunity to change the general opinion about video games and sports. As Bertrand Amar explains, “there will also be other esports news during the show. We will obviously talk about sports simulations first, but not only. We plan on giving news about other esports titles like Hearthstone, Call of Duty, Overwatch and more.”

Organizing your own tournament

L’Equipe 21 and Media365 aren’t experts at organizing esports competitions. Yet, they plan on organizing their own. To do so, they are relying on key partners: Glory4Gamers and Bang Bang Management.

Last summer, Glory4Gamers, who also runs the Playstation Plus League, ran an online FIFA tournament for l’Equipe. The 500-slot tournament was filled within minutes, even though there wasn’t any cash prize to win. For the E-Football League, Glory4Gamers were only responsible for the online qualifiers. Ten players were selected via three online tournaments in which a total of around 2000 players subscribed. The 2000 slots were full “within minutes”, l’Equipe reported.

To find the ten remaining players, l’Equipe 21 relied on Bang Bang Management, a player management company which also represents Bora “YellOwStar” Kim, one of Europe’s most prominent League of Legends players.The company, run by Sasha Brodowski, hand-picked “the best French players.” But even more important, Bang Bang Management brought the commentator Bruce “Spank” Grannec, who has been part of the French football simulation communities for years. With 20 qualified players and a team of commentators that know the FIFA scene very well, l’Equipe21’s challenge to organize its own tournament doesn’t seem that crazy after all.

Low involvement from Electronic Arts

In recent years, esports got used to developers pushing their games into esports. In this case, however, Electronic Arts has stayed at a reasonable distance. While having its sayings at least on the Glory4Gamers’ qualifications part, EA was not the main input for the E-Football League. Fabrice Jouhaud insists on the fact that E-Football League isn’t about FIFA. “It’s a football league, not a FIFA league, there is no commercial partnership with EA,” he says.

In fact, the underdevelopment of the FIFA scene allows for easier maneuvers. “In esports, FIFA is a fairly underdeveloped title. It lacks key elements like a spectator mode for example,” says Bertrand Amar. “To watch games, there isn’t too many options. This is how we had the idea with l’Equipe 21, to create a league with a show about esports.”

Is it the beginning of more esports tournaments on sports TV ?

The main question is still if competitive integrity will be respected. “I am at first a video game fan,” says Amar, ”We are working on a show with a fair competition. I am careful not to pervert esports,” he adds. The presence of well known commentators and players seems like a good sign for the tournament. Long term professionals were involved in the process and it might ensure that the integrity of competition will be respected.

Overall, it seems like the E-football League has all it takes to become a success. A sports TV channel realizes that esports has a great entertainment value. There will be quality games broadcasted in full length, the expertise of long term video-games actors, and news about the rest of the esports scene. But as always with TV, the sustainability of the show will depend highly on its audience numbers. In case of low results, we can still imagine the league being a success.

There will be playoffs organized with the 4 best players, if everything goes right. The winner will earn a one year contract as a pro player for l’Equipe 21, but there is no specification about what this contract means exactly. As Amar says, “we haven’t reached a decision yet and want to determine this with the winner. It will be some kind of a sponsorship, he could also become a consultant for l’Equipe 21, a commentator, or just want to compete in future tournaments, it’s still open to discussions.” While it is nice to see an open minded approach, it also shows how versatile the ending of the league might be. Nothing is written in stone and things are still open to change.

The recent ESWC finals numbers hint for a good surprise. There’s also the recent expansion of Vfl Wolfsburg into esports. In case of a success, E-Football League might very well catch the attention of even bigger TV channels in France, that are without a doubt taking notes. “Esports are being discussed for quite some time,” says Fabrice Jouhaud. Which explains why l’Equipe.fr did a huge report on esports in December, even though “it wasn’t planned as an advertisement for the E-Football League.” French TV channels are now aware of the outstanding growth numbers esports has been showing off in the past years. They’ll certainly want to be part of the party.