Russian e-football championship – six main questions. E-football: who needs it and why? History of eSports in Russia
The Russian Football Premier League (RFPL) e-football cup will be held in Ufa on February 24–26. 16 players will take part in the tournament, each of whom represents one of the clubs in the elite division of the national championship.
TASS talks about the features of eSports competitions and the financial side of professional football simulation games.
Leaders of e-football and their patrons
The most popular and successful lines of football simulators for many years have been the FIFA series (from the Canadian company EA Sports) and Pro Evolution Soccer (abbreviated as PES, developed by the Japanese company Konami). Most of the gaming market belongs to the FIFA series, although the Japanese simulator also has its own audience.
Play e-football with Gianni Infantino (FIFA President - TASS note)? Well, why not. We already played real football with him in the summer
Vitaly Mutko
Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, President of the RFU (December 2016)
The main difference between the two games is the realism of the game model (gameplay) and the tournament license (FIFA owns the rights to most of Europe's leading tournaments, a total of 35 leagues in the version of the game released in 2016. PES, in turn, owns the rights to the largest club European competitions: the Champions League, Europa League and UEFA Super Cup; from 2011 to 2016, the main club tournament in South America, the Copa Libertadores, was represented in the game).
The FIFA and PES series are supported by various international football organizations. The EA Sports series has received the support of the International Football Federation (FIFA), and the Konami product has received the support of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). The prize money for the winner and finalist of FIFA (2017 FIFA Interactive World Cup) and Pro Evolution Soccer (PES League) tournaments is the same. The champions will receive $200 thousand, and the losers in the final matches will receive $100 thousand.
The selection of participants for cyber football competitions is carried out according to a system that includes several qualifying stages. For example, 32 players will enter the tournament under the auspices of FIFA (16 on PlayStation 4 consoles, 16 on Xbox). The quotas between the participants are divided as follows: ten winners of the European qualification (five players for each of the two types of consoles), eight - American (four participants each), four - the rest of the world (two each on PlayStation and Xbox). Another eight places are reserved for the winners of the Ultimate Team Online Championship in FIFA 17 (four players each). One more place for each console will be up for grabs among e-sportsmen who have signed contracts with real clubs (German Wolfsburg, Spanish Valencia, English Manchester City and Portuguese Sporting).
In addition to tournaments under the auspices of FIFA and UEFA, other international e-football competitions are also held, such as the Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC). His total prize fund in 2016 was $15 thousand, the winner received $8 thousand, the finalist - $4 thousand, and the third place winner - $2 thousand. CSKA cyber player Andrey Guryev was fourth, he earned $1 thousand.
The biggest prize money in eSports
The most profitable games for eSports players are real-time strategy games and role-playing games Dota 2 (the prize fund of the tournament in 2016 was $20.7 million, the winner received $9.1 million) and League of Legends ($5 million and $2 million, respectively), and also first-person shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive ($1.5 million and $800 thousand)
The leadership positions of these games are ensured not only by a large audience, but also by the fact that the game has been operating for many years. It is impossible for sports simulators that are released annually to compete with “long-running” projects in this regard.
History of eSports in Russia
Russia was the first country to recognize computer sports as an official sport. The corresponding order was signed in July 2001 by the head of the Russian State Committee for Physical Education and Sports, Pavel Rozhkov. After the structure was transformed into the Federal Agency for Physical Culture and Sports, as well as the introduction of the All-Russian Register of Sports, the procedure was carried out again in March 2004 by decision of the head of the department, Vyacheslav Fetisov.
In July 2006, this sport was removed from the register because it did not meet the criteria to be included in this list: it was not developed in more than half of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. In addition, there was no specialized all-Russian physical education and sports association registered in the country. In June 2016, the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation returned computer sports to the status of an official sport.
About the RFPL e-football Cup
The draw ceremony will take place on February 24. The first stage, in which the 16 participants will be divided into two groups of eight players (meetings in the "each against each other" format), and the quarter-final meetings (starting from this round of a series of best-of-three matches of one of the players) will be held on February 25. The semi-finals and the decisive match of the first official cyber football tournament in Russian history will be held on February 26.
Any direction that interests the fans is important for the club. They like it, which means it should interest us too.<...>The ratings and popularity of eSports do not allow us to remain on the sidelines. That's why we signed contracts with two e-sportsmen at once
Daria Spivak
Marketing Director of FC Lokomotiv
Gaming platform - Sony PlayStation 4 console, simulator for identifying the winner - FIFA 17 produced by EA Sports.
The main goals set for the organizers of the cup: preparing participants for performances at international tournaments, as well as expanding the fan base of Premier League teams by including an audience of computer sports fans.
The winner of the competition will be awarded a cup and a commemorative medal. In addition, the organizing committee of the event reserves the right to establish cash prizes for participants.
Each of the 16 Premier League clubs is represented at the tournament by one e-sportsman. At the competition in Ufa, teams from the elite of Russian football will be represented by the following players:
Contracts with professional e-football players, in particular, were signed by CSKA, Spartak, Zenit and Ufa, while Rostov, Krasnodar, Ural and Krylya Sovetov held regional qualifying competitions that determined the players who their teams will be represented at the RFPL Cup.
The Bashkir cybersportsman also admitted that he does not think about whether his “native walls” will help him. “We will only find out what will actually happen during the tournament,” he concluded.
About the RFPL open e-football championship
At the end of January (PlayStation 4) and beginning of February (Xbox One), qualifying competitions for participation in the FIFA 17 National Open Championship were held. Two players from each qualifying stage advanced to the final part of the tournament. At the decisive stage they will play against representatives of Russian Premier League clubs. The final of the national cyberfootball championship will be held in Kazan in early March (date and place have not yet been determined). In addition to the title, the winner of the championship will receive the right to play in the European qualifying competitions of the interactive World Cup under the auspices of the International Football Federation (FIFA).
The decisive matches of the world e-football championship will be held in London. Their winner will receive an invitation to the FIFA awards ceremony, including the best player of 2017.
Andrey Mikhailov
(RFS) and the Computer Sports Federation (FCS) of Russia announced the country's first cyberfootball championship. Following England, France and other leading European football powers, Russia will host the official national championship.
What kind of cyber football?
By analogy with the official name, it is called “interactive football” - in fact, it is a tournament for the computer game FIFA 2018 from Electronic Arts. Back in April of this year, the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation recognized e-sports as a direction being developed at the national level, and already in June it designated e-football as a separate discipline - albeit within the framework of football, not computer sports. That is why both the RFU and the FCC of Russia are jointly responsible for holding official competitions.
What format?
The main beauty of the tournament is that anyone can take part in the qualifying games, and in the final part, representatives of Russian Football Premier League clubs will be waiting for the winners - there the level of participants will be very high. At the qualifying stage, 48 tickets will be played out: 21 people will be selected based on the results of a series of online tournaments, another 27 will receive the right to compete at the Russian Championship based on the results of offline qualifying rounds (the organizers call them Grand Prix), which are timed to coincide with the matches of the national team and key games of the Russian Premier League , but take place directly at the stadiums. Another 16 people representing Premier League clubs will join the winners, and in the final round 64 participants will determine the Russian champion among themselves.
What results did Russia have in e-football before?
About the same as the national team. In none of the 14 world championships held under the auspices of FIFA have the Russians reached the final, although both the USA and Saudi Arabia have won it. At the same time, our players were always among the strongest and periodically gave good results. For example, in 2006, a person with a significant name for domestic football - Viktor "alexx" Gusev - took third place at the World Cyber Games, which in those years was almost the main e-sports tournament in the world.
Where else is e-football taken as seriously as Russia?
In almost all European countries. The main wave began in 2016, when several leading organizations - the English Premier League, the French Ligue 1, and the Dutch Eredivisie - announced the start of e-football championships. The trend quickly spread across Europe, and some teams signed not just one, but several players to their rosters, for example, Roma.
The RFPL Championship and Cup took place at the beginning of 2017, but formally the winner could not be called the champion of Russia. Accordingly, it is the winner of the current Russian cyberfootball championship who will receive this status.
Who to follow?
The main character of Russian cyber football is Andrey "Timon" Guryev. Having started playing FIFA in 2009, today the Nizhny Novgorod resident is not only the strongest player in Russia, but is also among the best players in the world. In 2017, according to the results of the E-football World Cup, which is held by FIFA, Andrei took 11th place out of 32 participants; a year earlier he finished fourth at the Electronic Sports World Cup. At home in 2017, he had no equal: Andrey won victories in the championship and the RFPL Cup, playing for CSKA.
Andrey's main competitor should be Robert "ufenok77" Fakhretdinov. Back in 2014, he took second place at the same ESWC, and last summer he moved to Lokomotiv from Ufa, for which he played in RFPL tournaments - this was the first official transfer in the history of domestic e-football.
In general, e-football players actively participate in the life of the clubs for which they play. For example, before the match between Lokomotiv and Krasnodar last Monday, everyone could play with Ufenko right in front of the stadium.
When do they play?
At the moment, the names of 18 participants in the final stage are known, and the next online qualifiers will be held on October 28 - everyone is registered at
Compared to real football, virtual football in our country is quite competitive, we even have our own world champions, and Russia was the first to come up with the idea of organizing an e-sports federation. At the end of 2016, six clubs of the Spanish Primera decided to create a championship, we went further (the initiator was Ufa, where the role of Azamat Muratov, the head of the Bashkir branch of the Russian Computer Federation, was important). The first sign was the RFPL Cup, where each team was represented by one eSports player. The question arose, where to get them?
The pioneer in this matter was the same Ufa, which signed a contract last summer with the 2015 FIFA world champion Robert Fakhretdinov. The next step was taken by Spartak, which recruited Sergei Nikiforov, known under the pseudonym “Kefir,” into its ranks. The Red and Whites bet not only on sporting success, but also on media exposure, which allowed them to attract new fans. If anyone doesn’t know, Sergey is a famous blogger, and the main team even takes him to training camps. The remaining clubs followed two paths.
The first is signing contracts with cyber football players whose names are already known to the public. This is exactly what they did in CSKA (Andrey Guryev), Krasnodar (Andrey Konnov), and Zenit (Ruslan Yaminov). The second way is for clubs to hold qualifying tournaments. It was used by Terek, Amkar, Anzhi, Ural and other teams. The second option is the most controversial, since the strongest will not always win.
The RFPL has finally decided that eSports is a sport. Here is the argument of RFPL executive director Sergei Cheban: “If it’s competition, if it’s excitement, if one, two, three, several are participating. Of course, sport, how it lights up, what kind of dynamics, in my opinion, sport. Even though it’s a tabletop sport for now, it’s still sport. ".
The status of the event is evidenced by the fact that one of the commentators was Kirill Nabutov, and Gennady Sergeevich Orlov was the guest of honor. During the match between Ufa and Zenit, he enthusiastically applauded Robert Fakhretdinov, who scored one of the goals, having previously assisted his player to score with his heel. Here is what the master of sports journalism thinks about the tournament: “It seems that there are no losers. “Ufa” won (spoiler) the championship place, so everyone should be happy. The guys have a working head, that is, they teach football correctly. This is real football propaganda - tactics ", technology, as Sergei Bogdanovich told me, this was his dream team, so that the football players would be so technical and tactically competent. Cyber football will live in Russia!"
First, a draw took place, dividing the e-football players into two groups. They had to play 7 matches, then quarter-finals (the 4 best teams from each group got into them), semi-finals and final series up to two victories. All virtual players had a fixed rating (85), therefore, for example, the advantage of Zenit over Tom could not be overwhelming.
In Group A, Anton Klenov, representing Lokomotiv, showed the maximum result at the group stage. The two-time national champion “Kefir”, who was always followed by a dozen schoolchildren, took second place, with the players of “Amkar” and “Orenburg” occupying the third and fourth positions, respectively.
But in group “B”, which was noticeably stronger in composition, everything was much more interesting. Its winner was Andrey Konnov from Krasnodar, who had 4 wins and 3 draws. Like the real Krasnodar, the virtual one was noted for its bright play. Just look at the victory over Zenit (4:3) and the draw with CSKA (4:4). Second place with exactly the same number of points was taken by the favorite of the Ufa public, Robert Fakhretdinov, who suffered two defeats (from Rubin and Krasnodar). Third place goes to CSKA, fourth place to Zenit. An interesting fact about Anton Zhukov from Kazan - in 2015 he was disqualified for fixing a game.
The quarterfinals were not without sensations: Konnov from Krasnodar, who had not conceded before, was knocked out by Orenburg representative Kirill Ordinartsev in three matches. “Kefir” also left the tournament at this stage - its “Spartak” was beaten by CSKA. Moreover, the score of the first match was 0:4. The other semi-finalists were players from Loko and Ufa. In the semi-finals, Robert beat Kirill in class, and in the other pair it took all three matches to determine the winner - the e-football player from CSKA was more successful.
In the final, he continued his winning streak, beating the representative of Ufa, for whom the entire audience was rooting (both matches ended with a score of 3:2). We can only hope that Andrey Guryev will not take cyber fourth place in the Cyber Champions League. The last match was watched by the players of the Ufa football club, led by Sergei Semak, who shared his impressions of what he saw: “Thank you to the guys for a very interesting game, they kept us in suspense, our players enjoyed the excellent content and quality of the game, we take note for ourselves "What we need to improve on. We could bring in some guys as analysts."
The winner himself comments on his success: “All the matches were quite difficult, I made it through the group very difficult. I won the derby, I can highlight that, the main match with Spartak, this was most memorable. You may not win the tournament, but not win the derby with "Spartak" would be unforgivable."
Separately, it is worth mentioning the audience's interest. By the end of the first day, the number of views stopped at about 3 million people, of which more than 700 thousand were on the VKontakte social network. And the broadcast on Twitch entered the top 10 broadcasts of all games that took place that day, which became a historical achievement for Russian e-football and FIFA 17.
“If you're a football club and you're concerned about a new generation of potential fans getting excited about League of Legends, then you need to go and get them through alternative means,” says EA Sports chief executive Peter Moore. This quote best explains why European clubs are increasingly signing contracts with virtual football players, and individual leagues are organizing full-fledged eSports championships.
There are currently two major virtual football series in the world, but the popularity of FIFA and its Japanese competitor PES (Pro Evolution Soccer) is incomparable. FIFA 17 sold 1.1 million copies in the first week in the UK alone, the same in Germany and other European countries. PES is sold out about 40 times worse, but even such sales volumes do not prevent Konami from concluding contracts with Barcelona and UEFA. Simultaneously with Euro 2016, a PES tournament was organized, the matches of which were broadcast in the fan zone at the Eiffel Tower. If even an outsider has enough resources for such events, then the market should be considered serious.
It is clear that clubs are mastering e-sports in the hope of making money: the industry is developing extremely intensively. According to a Newzoo report, in 2016, the revenue of all esports was $492 million, and is expected to grow to $1.5 billion by 2020. The viewing audience already exceeds 300 million people a year: 162 million are a permanent audience, 161 million watch tournaments rarely, from time to time.
In the United States, interest in eSports is so great that individual players and teams are signed by specific athletes. Brooklyn Nets point guard Jeremy Lin created a Dota2 team with his own money and called it Team VGJ. Another basketball player, Rick Fox, acquired an existing team, but renamed it Echo Fox. Among the football players, Brazilian Ronaldo showed interest in e-sports, investing in 50% of the shares of the local team CNB e-Sports Club. Gerard Pique is also planning to create an e-sports project from scratch - by the way, he already has a video game production company, Kerad Games.
What is this all for?
Despite the rapid growth of e-sports, virtual football is not yet so profitable. In the ranking of the most popular online games, FIFA 17 does not even creep into the top ten. To change the situation and motivate players, the creators of the game (EA Sports) founded the FIFA Interactive World Cup tournament, on which they spend more and more every year. In 2017, the prize fund will be 1.3 million dollars, of which 200 thousand will go to the winner. This is 10 times more than last year, but still very little compared to global eSports - for example, the winner of the main Dota2 tournament (The international) was paid more than $8 million last year.
“Millions of people play FIFA 17 every day. Many of them learn about players and teams through the game and choose who to support in the future. If only for these reasons, we are interested in esports,” explains Diego Gigliani, senior vice president of media and innovation at City Football Group (Manchester City and New York City). The English club was one of the first to sign a contract with e-football player, 19-year-old Kieran Brown. He not only represents City at various tournaments, but is also committed to the number of live broadcasts on the Twitch service and videos uploaded to YouTube. On match days, the fifer meets with the club's fans and teaches them how to play FIFA 17. A similar model has already been adopted by Wolfsburg, West Ham, PSV, Ajax, Sporting Lisbon, PSG, Brøndby, " Panathinaikos, River Plate.
E-football is being developed most actively at the league level in France and Holland. Last October, Ligue 1 announced the holding of the first FIFA 17 tournament. Most likely, it will be won by PSG - the sheikhs, and in this situation, decided to take the best, signing two-time world champion August Rosenmayer and one of the most promising “fifers” Luca Kjellier. The Dutch announced the creation of a virtual Eredivisie only in mid-January, but it is already known that the matches will be broadcast not only by Twitch and YouTube, but also by the local television company Fox Sports. Each e-football player will be considered a real representative of his club.
There are no independent tournaments in England yet, but BT Sport, which broadcasts the Champions League, has agreed with EA to show key stages of the Fifa Ultimate Team Championship Series. For the first time, e-football will appear on such a large platform and appear on serious television. First, BT Sport will show the North American qualifying for the FIFA 17 World Cup, then the Asia-Pacific region will be included, then the European qualification will take place, and the final stage will take place in Berlin on May 20 and 21.
Now also in Russia
The third European league where the official FIFA 17 championship appeared was Russia.
Before the resumption of the Premier League, a tournament was held in Ufa, in which representatives of all 16 clubs played. “In the future, the e-football championship will most likely run parallel to the real one,” said the head of the Russian E-football Federation, Yuri Soshinsky. “For now, this Cup is a kind of independent tournament without continuation.”
Soshinsky admits that in fact, the Russian FIFA Championship has been held for three years without any participation from the RFPL. “This championship is part of a global tournament run by EA and FIFA. The winner of our tournament will have the opportunity to reach the final in London through the next few stages. At the same time, there will be a separate stage for those who directly represent football clubs.”
After the recognition of e-sports at the state level, the federation’s affairs went better. Virtual football has ceased to be an unrecognized hobby for teenagers after the November meeting of the RFU executive committee. Then the mayor of Kazan and the president of Rubin, Ilsur Metshin, suggested that Vitaly Mutko develop a fashion theme. The idea was publicly supported, but no actual steps were taken by the RFU. Then the RFPL played ahead of the curve by organizing the Russian Cup.
The league as a whole should be happy with the tournament: on the official YouTube channel of the RFPL, broadcasts of three days of the competition collected a total of approximately 200 thousand views (on average, a video on the channel gets about 5 thousand, with the exception of match reviews). On VKontakte, broadcasts of matches collected more than 720 thousand views.
“We are essentially building everything from scratch – we have only received any support from the government in the last year. There was nothing before this. We came to the RFPL three years ago, but then they were not very interested in it: they did not understand why it was necessary. But now we are actively cooperating with them. We communicated with the RFU several times, no more. They seem to be interested in the development of e-football, but they do nothing,” Soshinsky notes.
Russian clubs do not yet fully understand the prospects of the new direction. Some chose until the last minute who would represent them at the Cup in Ufa, and it is possible that all cooperation will end with participation in mandatory tournaments.
“Not a single club in Russia can be called progressive in the development of virtual football. There are several of them in the world,” noted the head of the e-football federation. – The only thing that Spartak has better than others is that they took the only player in the country whose level of play and media presence is comparable. But he’s the only one, the rest will catch up with time.”
Spartak signed a contract with Sergei “Kefir” Nikiforov. Now this is the most recognizable fifer in the country: 150 thousand subscribers on VKontakte, 700 thousand on YouTube. At the tournament in Ufa, Nikiforov was eliminated at the quarter-final stage, losing the derby to Andrey Guryev from CSKA. In the fall, Guryev won the Russian championship, and now he has won the Cyber Football Cup for the army team.
“My opinion is that all the clubs simply forced them to determine the player who will participate in the Cup and the Championship. It feels like after these tournaments the guys will be forgotten until the next major competition,” Kefir noted. – The clubs don’t quite understand what it is. They’ll pay for their flight, give them a club T-shirt for the performance – and that’s it.”
The fact that Russian clubs are only looking at e-football is confirmed by Zenit. Commenting on the cooperation with the best e-football player of St. Petersburg, Ruslan Yaminov, the club noted that the contract is short-term.
“The current agreement is preliminary in nature and is designed for three months, until May 2017, but we expect that our cooperation with Ruslan will not be limited to the RFPL tournament,” Zenit said. – We have serious plans for working together. It’s absolutely certain that Zenit fans are interested in cyber football, and the news about the start of cooperation with Ruslan Yaminov evoked a response no less than the message about the newcomers to the first football team.”