Bandai Namco announces Dragon Ball FighterZ World Tour format

Japanese publisher BANDAI NAMCO has announced details of the Dragon Ball FighterZ World Tour circuit.

Keeping to the story of Dragon Ball, the World Tour will centre around seven Dragon Balls with seven tournaments held around the world known as “Saga Events”. The winner of each event will receive a Dragon Ball and qualify for the finals in January 2019. The more Dragon Balls earned by one player the higher the seed they will be granted leading into the finals. If one single player wins all seven events that player will immediately advance to the grand finals. To complete the eight-player bracket BANDAI NAMCO will also hold a last chance qualifier for anyone hoping to compete.

The World Tour prize pool will be set at $60,000 (£45,200) with each Saga Event receiving a $5,000 (£3,700) bonus to the prize pool and the remaining $25,000 (£18,800) awarded at the final event.

Along with the format BANDAI NAMCO announced that Twitch will be the exclusive broadcast partner for the World Tour handling league operations, circuit events and global content. The partnership for the Dragon Ball FighterZ World Tour will be in addition to the ongoing broadcast deal Twitch has with BANDAI NAMCO for the Tekken World Tour as well.

The Dragon Ball FighterZ World Tour begins at the CEO Fighting Game Championships June 29 – July 1 in Daytona Beach, Florida. Other stops along the tour include the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Mexico, Singapore and Japan.

Esports Insider says: Fighting games always have a unique way of holding their tournaments and this is an exciting one to see from the Dragon Ball universe. Integrating the seven Dragon Balls as seven tournaments throughout the year only seems fitting for this game and genre. As an early iteration of Dragon Ball esports it will certainly be exciting to see who comes out on top of this event.