Held in New Delhi, the tournament had an overall prize pool of Rs 1.5 crore. It started on June 24th and concluded with a grand finale event on July 17th. This was also the first time when an esports tournament was aired live on a mainstream sports channel, Star Sports.
“Esports is now the second biggest sport in the country and we saw incredible interest levels from across the length and breadth of the country,” said Loco founders Anirudh Pandita and Ashwin Suresh in a statement. “This tournament is one of the most prestigious on the esports calendar and the participating teams put up a memorable display. Loco provided an unmatched digital experience for users by providing interactive tools and memorable watch parties, which set new standards for how sports content can be experienced. We have an exciting roadmap of new interactive features as well as blockbuster esports content that will continue to raise the bar for gaming entertainment!”
BGMI, or Battlegrounds Mobile India, is the most popular mobile game in India, with a massive user base. The esports ecosystem built around BGMI is also growing rapidly in the country.
To increase the excitement, Loco enabled streamers to host watch parties to provide their own live take on the event, first-of-its kind live scoreboard, which kept fans informed of the latest standings, easy to find streams in multiple Indian languages, and customised support stickers which users sent on chat.
The tournament culminated in Mumbai-based Global Esports being crowned the champions piping Orangutan Gaming, who finished in second place. Fan favourites S8Ul and Godlike Esports gave thrilling moments to the viewers throughout the series but ultimately fell short on the final day.
Global Esports was awarded the BGMI Master Series trophy, prize money of Rs 25 lakh, and a Hyundai VENUE.
Loco claims its active users spend over one hour daily on the platform. It has grown rapidly over the last year, with daily active viewers scaling by 15x, monthly active viewers scaling by 8x, monthly active streamers scaling by 5x, and live watch hours scaling by 90x since Jan 2021.
