Teaming up with the first dedicated eSports facility in North America, Esports Arena, is the massive supermarket chain Walmart to bring eSports to a wider range of players. That’s right, Walmart is now playing a huge role in the continuation and growth of eSports! They are doing this by opening an official eSports facility in over 10 locations throughout North America. You can see if there is one near you here.
Esports Arena is starting things off strong by launching a first-of-its-kind, semi-professional league that will provide compensation for 40 competitors. This league is going to be called Series E and it is set to debut in May 2020 with qualifiers running February 6 through March 27 in select Walmart stores. Official player draft day will be April 18, 2020, which will be the beginning of weekly league play that will be streamed on both Twitch and Mixer.
Each day of the week will feature a different game. Their line up is set for Monday through Friday and includes League of Legends on Monday, Overwatch and Call of Duty on Tuesday, Street Fighter V on Wednesday, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on Thursday, and Fortnite on Friday.
Hopefully, these are just the early days of this partnership and we will see this become a standard operation in at least one Walmart for every other city. The days of eSports being considered a series competition that is open and available to talented players regardless of their location are coming closer with steps like these being taken. Are you excited to see this positive growth in eSports accessibility?
