Alibaba, one of the world’s biggest ecommerce site has announced their entry into the eSports market by revealing a $5.5 Million USD Prize Pool series.
The inaugural World Electronic Sports Games (WESG) tournament will feature titles CSGO, DOTA 2, StarCraft 2 and Hearthstone part of the line-up.
The press release states that AliSports was formed in September 2015 but due to the market being very volatile, a lot of research and planning was involved before being unveiled to the public today.
AliSports will also be establishing an Olympic-standardized regulation across its tournaments as well as using their own integrated platform which will help control and present their events to the audience. Things such as being able to view real-time in-game stats giving fans a big insight into the teams and players as well as helping clubs/organizations manage their teams, contracts and business development.
This is big news for the eSports market as a super company like Alibaba owned by China’s richest man enters the game. Events are reportedly starting in April. You can read the translated press release here.