In North America seven organisations have teamed up to form the Professional eSports Association (PEA) in a bid to further professionalise esports and ensure fair standards and pay for players.
It will be a team owned league with profits shared amongst competitors, as well as providing health insurance and other benefits to players.
Of course this isn’t the first time such an association has been created. In recent times there has been the WESA and the British eSports Association.
The former was heavily criticised after it emerged that teams which had representatives on the panel would also compete in WESA sanctioned competitions. This would potentially lead to bias in that they could vote down rule changes that would not be beneficial for their team.
The question is will PEA come under the same scrutiny? The teams involved are well known and boast huge fanbases. They include Team Liquid, Team SoloMid, Cloud9, Immortals, Counter Logic Gaming, NRG eSports, and compLexity Gaming.
The commissioner has been named as Jason Katz. Katz is the former COO at Azubu. In a promising report by Yahoo Esports Katz said that “we will have the highest level of transparency in the industry”.
It has been revealed that PEA will have a Rules Committee and a Grievances Committee and each of these will include player representatives.
The new organisation also stated that “players and owners will receive an equal 50 percents share of profits” and that casters who take part in the PEA will receive an equal share to players.
The PEA has some time to figure out its regulations, agenda and plans as it won’t be getting underway until January 2017 with a CS:GO league.