MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
ESL UK’s inaugural Battle of the Brands event saw £16,729 raised for games charity SpecialEffect as four of the UK’s biggest tech specialists threw down to see who was the best
Staff from Ebuyer Gaming, SCAN, Box.co.uk and PC Specialist faced off on January 13 across five games, including FIFA, Rocket League and CS:GO, with the aim of raising £10k for charity.
The Twitch stream attracted 222,000 fans on Twitch, reaching over a million people through Facebook and Twitter. The event was successful enough that ESL UK are in the planning stages for similar charity events.
“What started as a jokey Twitter war turned into a great opportunity to raise funds and awareness for the important work of SpecialEffect, “ commented James Dean, managing director at ESL UK. “It’s just fantastic to have such a great reaction from the community. My sincere thanks to everyone who donated, and to the teams themselves for participating.”
“Never in our wildest dreams did we think a daft tweet would turn into something so amazing,” said Steve James, esports and gaming marketing manager, Ebuyer Gaming. “The UK gaming community really is special and hopefully this is the start of something huge that will live on for years to come.”
“We were totally bowled over by the response to the first ever Battle of the Brands,” said Tom Donegan, event coordinator, SpecialEffect. “The passion and generosity shown by everyone in coming together to support their fellow gamers was incredible to see. The money and awareness raised will provide a massive boost to SpecialEffect as we set-out to help even more severely disabled people with their technology needs this year. A huge thank you to all the teams, sponsors, donors and ESL for hosting such an incredible event – we can’t wait for the next one!”
