Emil “HeatoN” Christensen and Tommy “Potti” Ingemarsson have announced a joint venture to launch the Swedish eSports League. The inaugural season will feature Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and will award 750,000 SEK (£63,845) in total prize money.
HeatoN and Potti have started the league with the goal of creating ‘the same kind of framework for esports, as for other youth sports activities’. The other focus of the league is to create more local teams and reduce the void in skill between pro and local teams. The plan of the league is to achieve this with their seasonal league structure and prize pool to support the teams’ development.
Potti was one of the founders of Ninjas in Pyjamas (NiP) back in 2000, the team started with humble beginnings at a small LAN event in Lidköping, Sweden. Along with HeatoN, the two played a major role in NiP’s Counter-Strike teams for a number of years and being dominant in the LAN scene. HeatoN still remains with NiP, he reformed the organisation in 2012, and he remains with them to this day as a manager. HeatoN has been busy in esports recently, after joining CUBE as an advisor and joining Swedish Esports bar, Kappa bar.
Speaking about the move, Tommy “Potti” Ingmarsson said: “My vision is that the Swedish eSports League should represent what the Swedish Hockey League represents to hockey and the Swedish Soccer League represents to football. The lack of organization, local teams and local leagues leaves millions of talents and gaming enthusiasts all over the world gaming only at home, in solitude, instead of having leaders, a context and a proper structure for their gaming. In the long term, teams should be able to make a living on eSports, just as many as there is today making a living on playing professional football.”
The first season of the league will kick off this autumn. After this autumn, the league plans to have two seasons per year, with the main league and four regional subdivisions: South, North, East and West. Trials will begin this August for each region, with the top team from each region earning a spot in the main league, while the remaining teams will compete in subdivisions. The league will also be the flagship league for the esportal automated tournament platform.
Esports Insider says: Grassroots esports is important, Sweden has been one of the best producers of esports stars across the world and in a variety of games making it an unofficial hub of esports in Europe. This league, with its backing from two major names in esports, certainly has the foundation to be a strong league. Providing it can attract the number of teams required and host a successful first season, the sky is the limit for the new league.