ESL, the German Games Industry Association (“BIU”) and 20 professional and semi-professional teams have come together to found the Esports-Bundes Deutschland (“ESBD”).
The announcement came yesterday, with the ESBD website and social media also being launched. The organisation aims to organise esports in Germany and act similarly to a professional sports association in the way that it represents players, clubs, teams and tournament organisers across the field.
From the image above, it’s clear to see the mixture of teams featuring big hitters such as BiG and Unicorns of Love joined by teams of differing sizes across the board. H2k are another prominent name, whilst ALTERNATE aTTaX and Playing Ducks might also be familiar to the wider world. Wind and Rain recently featured a squad at IEM Oakland in PLAYERUNKNOWN’s Battlegrounds. They’re joined by ESL, and BIU as aforementioned.
The board of directors to at EBSD is as follows (as reported by TEO):
- Niklas Timmermann – Esports agent;
- Dr. Fabian Laugwitz – associate partner for ACT Legal Frankfurt firm;
- Martin Müller – Magdeburg Esports e.V.’s chairman and co-founder;
- Jan Pommer – Director of Team and Federation Relations for ESL.
The founding statement included quotes from ESBD’s president Hans Jagnow, who stated: “We are starting at a good timing when esports receives more attention. We want to take advantage of this opportunity to talk to all stakeholders and improve the conditions for everyone involved in esports. We also set ourselves a goal to have esports recognised soon as a sport”.
Esports Insider says: Another association aiming to move esports towards official sports recognition. It remains to be seen as to whether this is something the community truly wants to happen, or if it’s something that needs to happen. We’ve seen many pop up and not make much traction so we’ll have to wait and see. When E-sport Bund is googled, the first link throws up the “ESVD” which had similar aims, albeit nowhere near as comprehensive a partner list. It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out.