89 minutes have gone and you are 39-0 for the week, its 1-1 and suddenly you hit your opponent on the counter attack you beat not one but two men with the infamous Elastico, this means there is no one now between yourself and the keeper with only 40 yards of pitch between you, what will either be a moment of madness or a moment of genius your opponent brings their keeper, it soon becomes clear it was a moment of madness and with a smirk on your face you go for a cheeky chip from 35 yards and score a beauty and just to rub salt in their winds you Dab them in your celebration and they rage quit. You sit back down, in your bedroom. You adjust your headset which has fallen off in the celebrations. You are now 40-0 for the weekend, the first time you have achieved this on EA FIFA 18.

The 10 highest earning eSports players

Imagine not being good enough to play professional football for your local team. Imagine not experiencing the joy and pride of pulling on a jersey with your name on it and represent your team in front of thousands of fans. Imagine then realising that the gaming skills you have acquired over thousands of hours of practice, the same as a player who trains every night, could turn into a career and allow you represent your favourite team in their shirt inf front of thousands of fans at a packed eSports stadium.

My name is Trev and alongside Ben, Geoff and Colm we run the Global eLeague, a league that gives competitive gamers the chance to realise their dreams and represent their favourite team.

For the uninitiated, competitive gaming or “eSports”, is a form of competition using video games and professional players.  That’s how we came about, we wanted to give amateur FIFA gamers in the Ireland & the UK a platform to represent their local football club on a competitive stage.

We started in 2016, working with Hibernian, Crusaders, Hamilton, Linfield, Dundalk, TNS, Shamrock Rovers and Wolves. We took gamers and gave them a chance to represent those clubs. They wore the jerseys, they competed for the club and they felt pride.

We came back this year with 64 teams and we are down to the final 8. We get over 200,000 people watching the content we create, from goals of the week, to a match of the day type review show to pack openings.

The grand final will take place on May 24th at the home of FC Twente. This ambitious club have opened their arms to welcome us in; but we need help with accommodation for teams and production. The accommodation will provide an opportunity for these gamers, young players realising a dream of playing for their team, to stay in a stadium. The costs of production are quite high – we are not looking to make a profit – just to cover the costs of a great competition.

The history of eSports

We have some sponsors coming on board, but we want to do this again – bigger, better and more engaging for those interested in eSports and so young gamers in Ireland and the UK can have a platform to play for their local club, so we need your help.

eSports and more importantly FIFA eSports is a growth over the last 18 months has been huge, this means that with its growth and its constant changes that we need to make sure that we are always looking for ways to improve, with this comes numerous expenses and they can vary from things like production, prize pool’s, licencing fee’s, stadium costs and hopefully one day salaries

Want to know more on eSports:

eSports is considered the fastest growing Sport in the world with the eSports industry is expected to be a billion $ industry by 2019. It engages a key 14-30-year-old demographic for leagues, clubs and sponsors. eSports viewers and players reside on Twitch, Social Media, Dingit and other non-traditional channels. Of the 595 million people watching eSport events and participating, 125 million are casual viewers. It is estimated that in UK there are 36.6m casual gamers, of which 3.1 million are competitive.  We want to give them a platform.

See here for more information: The massive growth of Esports