British eSports teams like Fnatic and Dignitas will be crossing the Atlantic to pit their wits against the best in the business in the coming months. There is a burgeoning eSports scene in the UK, with plenty of exciting teams beginning to emerge, but for now Fnatic and Dignitas are the dominant forces. Both are now sprawling global organisations, and Dignitas is owned by the Philadelphia 76ers, but they remain headquartered in London and have British stars like Palmatoro and Poacher. British teams will be competing at tournaments like Dreamhack, Evo, H1PL and WoW this spring and summer, and they stand a chance of success.
Check best online sportsbooks if looking to place action on events and you will see Fnatic and Team Dignitas in the mix and among the favourites to seize glory at several big American tournaments this year. Fnatic’s head office is in Shoreditch, east London, and it now has branches in San Francisco, Berlin, Belgrade and Kuala Lumpur. Its roster of world-class starts competes in more than 75 international events per year across 20 different games including League of Legends, Dota 2, Battlefield 4 and CS:GO. It has been described by Bloomberg as Europe’s biggest and most successful team, and it has enjoyed plenty of success of American soil.
Fnatic is currently second in the CS:GO world rankings after defeating FaZe Clan 19-17 on Train to clinch a 3-2 series victory at the Intel Extreme Masters Katowice. It is ranked fifth in the LoL charts behind only four legendary Asian teams: Kingzone DragonX, KSV, Invictus Gaming and Longzhu Gaming. It is ranked eighth in the world for Dota 2 and it is right at the top of the Battlefield 4 rankings. It is extremely competitive in almost every eSport around, and does a great job of flying the British flag, even if many of the stars are Swedish or from continental Europe.
Dignitas will be a force to be reckoned with Stateside, as always, but in an era of Sixers ownership and sponsorships from Mountain Dew and Buffalo Wild Wings it does not have much of a British feel any more. Beyond those two giant teams, which are increasingly becoming global operations, the UK eSports collectives are pretty small. The country has not enjoyed the grassroots investment of other developed nations, and British talent has been somewhat stifled accordingly. But there are a few up and coming teams to look out for, as they could go on to shine in big North American tournaments going forwards.
Endpoint was only founded in the summer of 2016 but it has already shot to the top of the British CS:GO rankings and it has Street Fighter V players that could end up at Evo in Las Vegas this year. Prophecy is another, while MnM Gaming, founded by brothers Kalvin and Daniel Chung, is bidding to give budding British eSports players a platform for success. “We wanted to be big eSports stars, but as you can imagine with a traditional Chinese family, they put education first,” said Daniel in a recent interview. “We said, we can’t play ourselves; we don’t have the time, so why don’t we set up a platform whereby we can give others the opportunity to reach the eSports level that we wanted to reach, and we’d sort of get satisfied by seeing everyone else reach their high-profile status in the scene. If you compare this to European countries – in Sweden, a lot of eSports clubs get given a grant from the government to help start up. In terms of government support, we’re lagging behind, and how the government understands eSports is behind. The BBC has only just caught up, from spinning eSports to a negative viewpoint to a positive viewpoint.”
The likes of Fnatic aside, Britain may be lagging behind countries like South Korea, the USA and Sweden when it comes to producing eSports stars, but there is plenty of untapped potential and a great deal of opportunity going forward. Stars like Palmatoro have already established themselves and if they taste success over the Atlantic this year it could spur on more youngsters to get involved.
