Mentioned in this article Games: League of Legends, Overwatch

Korean esports producer and television channel OGN will be launching a league competition for the breakout-hit PLAYERUNKNOWN’s BATTLEGROUNDS, planned for next year. OGN is also building an esports broadcasting facility specifically for the games in the Ilsan studio of its parent company CJ E&M. According to a report from DailyEsports, it will be capable of seating up to 100 individual competitors at a time.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]OGN is also building an esports broadcasting facility specifically for the games in the Ilsan studio of its parent company CJ E&M.[/perfectpullquote]

For now OGN isn’t releasing any details on the format for next year’s league, other than that the pre-season will be held in January, with a grand-finals at the end of the year. The Esports Observer reached out to PUBG Corp for additional details, but did not receive a reply by publication time.

OGN is one of the original esports operators in South Korea, having broadcast StarCraft: Brood War way back in 2000, and currently runs the League of Legends Champions Korea. The channel’s entry into competitive PUBG is promising for the game’s future as an esport, which to date has only had one significant competition – the ESL Invitational at Gamescom 2017. Compared to Western tournament organisers, OGN are moving fast to capitalise on the game’s South Korean playerbase; in August PUBG became the second-most played title in the country’s PC bangs (overtaking Overwatch).

PUBG’s main mode supports up to 100 players on the map at a time, so a massive studio like the one OGN is planning would be necessary to broadcast this kind of match in full. If the production is done right, it’s not hard to imagine the kind of drama and excitement that a live arena of players getting eliminated would bring.

[perfectpullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]OGN is one of the original esports operators in South Korea, broadcasting

StarCraft: Brood War in 2000, and currently running the League of Legends Champions Korea.[/perfectpullquote]

However there is still a lot to PUBG as an esport that isn’t figured out. For one, there’s no consensus on what the right format is. The four-day Gamescom Invitational featured three different team modes (Solo, Duo, and Squad) and different players have a preference for either third or first-person camera views.

Of course, there’s also added difficulty in broadcasting a tournament that features one hundred players spread out simultaneously over a sixty four square kilometer map. On the other hand, some gameplay elements would work perfectly for television broadcasts, as each game runs on average around thirty minutes.

PUBG will again reach an esport audience with the IEM Oakland event on November 18-19. There’s still a lot to be figured out with how the survival shooter develops into a legitimate esport, and we’re starting to see a steady decline in the game’s viewership on Twitch. However, with more and more teams making the same call and investing in the game’s growing professional player base, OGN is clearly betting that the title sticks around.