South African CS:GO tourny offers R1m prize pool

Esports has grown exponentially over the years, and South Africa has been no exception in this regard. From FIFA to Dota 2 and CounterStrike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), we’ve seen esports become firmly established locally. Heck, CS:GO matches have even been shown on Supersport.

Now, a new CS:GO tournament is offering a R1-million prize pool as well as a Twitch partnership.

Formed by local esports group Mettlestate, it’s been branded as the “biggest prize of its kind for a single esports title in South Africa”.

Mettlestate originally held an exhibition match between Bravado Gaming and Energy Sports on 1 March 2017, streaming on its Twitch channel.

“Once the stage had been set, the battle fought and the victor hailed, Mettlestate thought it apt to reveal a few of the aces we had up our sleeve — like the CS:GO tournament and the R1-million prize pool, a first of its kind; the likes of which will forever change the face of esports in South Africa,” wrote Mettlestate’s Barry Louzada on the group’s site.

Mettlestate has announced a CS:GO esports tournament in South Africa, with a prize pool of R1-million

Louzada says that the biggest issue for Twitch streaming is that, ordinarily, you can’t adjust your streaming quality from 720p.

“The biggest benefit of our partnership with Twitch is the ability to change the streaming quality, which as we know in South Africa (due to our lack of high speed internet) can be a problem — particularly for gamers.”

Mettlestate adds that esports draws more viewers globally than the NBA and 180 million people are expected to tune in to esports by 2019.

As for the tournament itself, 12 professional teams have been invited and 12 more are available to the public. Mettlestate is working on a first-come, first-served basis for the latter.