Despite what your mom or dad think, eSports are here to stay. Not only are there thousands of professionals who make a living off of their gaming prowess and sponsors, now some of the world’s largest club soccer teams are starting to buy up the best squads.
Just two days ago, Valencia CF signed a deal to secure an eSports team and today Kotaku announced that Manchester United, the world’s third most popular soccer team, is also trying to get into the mix.
Specifically, Manchester United wants to put together an Overwatch team. The game is still relatively new, immensely popular (and great), and family-friendly as far as shooters go. It’s also important to consider how much support Blizzard’s given their games in the past, so we can see Overwatch being popular for a long time.
So who are the lucky players? We don’t know yet, but they must be pretty excited. From eSports-News:
[Manchester United] are in talks with a professional European Overwatch team who are currently signed to another organisation, eSports News UK can exclusively reveal.
On top of that, established eSports brand Fnatic are also interested in signing the same team, putting a British sports club head-to-head with a competitive gaming organisation in this manner for the first time.
Hopefully we find out soon. And if Manchester United is reading this and the bidding for the team falls through, just know that I’m probably a lot cheaper than those other guys.
I’ll be really interested to see who’s the first club soccer team to put together a FIFA squad. That’d be really putting their name on the line.
