Telefónica presented today the balance sheet for Movistar’s one-year wager on eSports and the challenges for 2018, among which is the creation of the Movistar Riders Academy, a project aimed at promoting the eSports talent in Spain, and whose main goal is to offer future champions the possibility of accessing a unique training space where they will be able to take advantage of technical knowledge and experience of Movistar Riders.

Dante Cacciatore, Director of Communications, Brand, and Customer Experience at Telefónica España, provided the main one-year magnitudes “of a project that has exceeded our expectations, until it has become one of the pillars of Movistar’s strategy”. Among them, more than a dozen Movistar Riders Club national and international level titles, 145,000 attendees to the events and tournaments organized in Spain by Movistar eSports and ESL, and more than 6,800 registrations in the different competitions organized and/or sponsored by Movistar.

Likewise, ten programs produced in-house have been developed in the Movistar+ Movistar eSports Channel. In addition, 2.7 million followers, 185 million hits, 15 million visualizations of contents, and 250,000 pages visited each month were reached in the digital ecosystem of Movistar eSports.

Cacciatore assured that this year, Telefónica “wants to take a step forward promoting the development of eSports among fans, and for this purpose we have the best tool: connectivity, the foundation of the Digital Revolution”.

The company has already marked several challenges for 2018. To help to discover and promote the talent in Spain, to facilitate the training and digital enjoyment of eSports, and to transform Movistar into the largest generator of Spanish-speaking eSports contents. In order to meet these challenges, it has the “best travelling mates”: the Movistar Riders Club, the Movistar eSports Centre, the alliance with ESL, and the Movistar eSports platform, both on television and online.

The Movistar Riders Academy will have a national dimension divided into four zones, and will have the best technical team in order to develop the capabilities of the future eSports stars. Fernando Piquer, CEO of Movistar Riders, ensured that “the club will contribute towards the training of amateur players with the objective of forming future professional players, strengthening their emotional capabilities and digital competencies, as well as contributing to their personal evolution through the internalization of the values of the club and sports”.

Piquer recalled the successes of Movistar Riders in 2017 when more than ten national level awards and two international level awards were obtained, and added that the structure already has seven professional teams, 40 players in six different games, and more than 70 workers in total. Likewise, the CEO of Movistar Riders indicated that the Club continues to reap success in 2018, among them the presence of the Counter Strike team in the Mountain Dew League, and the classification of the Club to play the League of Legends SLO final in the city of Murcia next Sunday 25 March. 

The Movistar eSports Series is born

In line with this promotion of talent, and by virtue of the agreement between Movistar and ELS, the Movistar eSports Series was presented. The Movistar eSports Series is a set of competitions that will respond to the needs of amateur players and that will help them on their road to professionalisation.

Manuel Moreno, Managing Director Spain & Latam at ESL, explained that this initiative offers the incentive to amateur players of being able to earn trips to mayor events such as ESL One, Intel® Extreme Masters, or other iconic ESL events. However, he indicated that “the most important thing is that the CS:GO Movistar eSports Series will offer teams who finish in first and second place a direct spot to play the Promotional Phase that will give access to the next season of the CS:GO ESL Masters, the CS:GO National League”.

As for Movistar eSports, Cacciatore underscored that it aspires to become the largest generator of Spanish-speaking eSports contents. To do so, the eSports contents are going to be expanded with greater coverage in Spanish-speaking international events, more contents, new magazine programs, and new direct own-production programs. “This greater content in Spanish will be available in our Movistar+ platforms and our Movistar eSports ecosystem”.

For his part, Carlos Martínez, Director of Sports Contents at Movistar+, emphasized that the television platform’s goal for eSports for 2018 is to have more direct hours, more competitions, more exclusive materials, and above all else, to continue making this sport grow among the general public. To do so, he repeated that the new localization of Movistar eSports on channel 60 “favours this objective because this way we position the channel between the blocks of channels that are linked exclusively to sports”.