ESPN is officially entering the world of esports with EXP, its official brand for esports competitions. The competitions are to be held at ESPN’s own events. The first on their list? Surprisingly, it's Apex Legends.
The Apex Legends competition is made possible in partnership with Electronic Arts. There will be two tournaments this summer. The first EXP Pro-Am Apex Legends tournament will be held alongside the 2019 ESPYS, which is in July. The second event takes place at X Games Minneapolis 2019 in August.
According to ESPN, future EXP competitions are expected to include a combination of professional, collegiate, and even pro-am formats.
In an ESPN story, Executive Vice-President of Disney & ESPN affiliate sales and marketing, Justin Connolly, said that by entering esports, ESPN can continue serving sports fans while also expanding its audiences. Connolly went on to say that ESPN remains committed to serving fans of esports on all platforms and content types and added that “Apex Legends is the perfect title to showcase EXP's vision of offering world-class live esports events anchored by storytelling and multi-platform distribution.”
ESPN Vice-President for Digital Programming John Lasker revealed that EXP stands for experience, which is one of the core concepts when it comes to gaming. It also relates to ESPN giving esports fans a truly excellent experience.
This collaboration is good news for Apex Legends, who has seen its player base gradually decrease. The game had high expectations after reaching one million unique players within eight hours of launch. However, the appearance of game-changing bugs along with cheating issues slowly dropped interest in the game.
Respawn Entertainment continues to provide support and even promises players that developers are working on fixing bugs and providing new content. Recently, Respawn gave players a peek at what the upcoming Season 2 has to offer aside from the new champion.
With the ESPN partnership, there is the hope player interest in the game will pick up again. It remains to be seen however how an official esports tournament for Apex Legends plays out. So far the only tournaments have been limited to Twitch Rivals and Code Red tournaments. To be fair though, some esports organizations have already createded their own Apex Legends teams likely in preparation for such competitions.
Let’s wait and see how this plays out.
