SINGAPORE, March 14 — Telecommunications firm Singtel is making a big leap into e-sports, as it announced plans to develop more services and offer more content to gamers, with an eye on grabbing a slice of the rapidly growing industry.
Singtel will also sponsor the first Singaporean e-sports team competing at the South-east Asian (Sea) Games in the Philippines in November and launch two new e-gaming leagues, it said yesterday.
There are more than 1.2 billion gamers in the Asia-Pacific region and the industry generated revenues of US$66.2 billion (RM270.7 billion) last year, based on data provided by gaming market research firm Newzoo.
At a media event yesterday, Singtel’s chief executive officer (international) Arthur Lang said that there are 200 million gamers among the 675 million customers who subscribe to Singtel and its partner telecommunication firms in the region.
To tap that market, Singtel is also exploring how to make paying for gaming content more seamless via its mobile billing services and mobile wallet, Singtel Dash.
Lang said that this will allow younger customers to make payment without having to use credit cards. The telco has also brought in Huawei’s Honor line of gaming phones to cater to mobile gamers.
Chee Hong Tat, Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry, said that Singtel is an important corporate partner that will be able to bring other gaming-related industries to work together and grow the industry ecosystem in Singapore.
“E-sports also gives us an opportunity to be able to bring e-sports-related events to Singapore. And this is not only a good event to attract the crowd to come to, say, a place like Orchard Road, it’s also a good attraction for tourists,” he added.
E-Sports team at Sea Games
Singtel plans to boost the e-sports scene here and in the region with several initiatives, including its sponsorship of Singapore’s first Sea Games e-sports team.
The sponsorship deal includes funding for training and competitions, player stipends and educational opportunities. E-sports will be a medal sport at the regional event for the first time in its 60-year history.
The telco also sponsors pioneer e-sports teams and players, who are known as Singtel PVP Ambassadors. One such ambassador is Ho Kun Xian, 28 — who is known as “RZR Xian” — a professional e-gamer who specialises in Street Fighter.
Under Singtel’s sponsorship as well is Resurgence, the largest Singapore-based professional e-sports organisation, which plans to field teams to represent Singapore in three of the six e-sports games on offer at the Sea Games.
Singtel PVP Ambassadors already receive support in the form of a cash package and sponsored high-speed Internet broadband and mobile data for a period of one year, among other things.
Ho said that this support is especially useful because he can use data roaming to stream his overseas games for his fans without having to worry about roaming fees.
Jayf Soh, director of Resurgence, said that the team’s association with Singtel has helped Resurgence access audiences in larger markets that were “very hard to reach in the past”.
To spur interest in the e-sports scene here, Singtel is launching two new e-gaming leagues, PVP Campus and PVP Corporate, for amateur gamers.
The PVP Campus League will be open to tertiary students in Singapore universities and polytechnics. Teams will compete in Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, a popular multiplayer online battle arena (Moba) game. Prizes worth up to S$20,000 will be up for grabs.
Chia Wei, 26, president of the Singapore Management University’s e-sports club, said that the new league will give young gamers more exposure as compared to the Inter-Varsity Games Festival, which has just five universities.
Working professionals may take part in the PVP Corporate League, a regional league for company teams to compete in games such as Dota 2 and Mobile Legends.
Singtel is partnering regional telcos such as Globe Telecom from the Philippines and Telkomsel from Indonesia to organise the league.
Lang said that a five-figure cash prize will be offered and companies may choose to donate the money to a charity of their choice.
The leagues’ qualifying rounds will begin in May and culminate in a finale event in Singapore in the second half of this year. — TODAY
