Each week we bring you a taste of what is happening around the commercial world of esports. We will focus on advances in the Irish sector when there are some, as well as on some of the commercial deals which are taking place and fuelling the rapid growth of this area within the world of sport.

NORRIS SETS UP ESPORTS AND CONTENT TEAM

F1 driver with McLaren Lando Norris has set up Team Quadrant, a brand new esports and content creation team.

Norris has embraced gaming with the delayed start to this season’s F1 campaign and has a Twitch audience of 600,000 as well as an Instagram following of 2.2 million.

“While racing will be a focus and be a bigger passion than almost any other esports, Quadrant is hopefully going to be expanding into many other different categories of esports and games,” he told BBC Sport at the launch of the team.

TEAM IRELAND TO PLAY IN BASKETBALL EUROS OF NBA2K

Ireland will compete at the FIBA Esports Open for the first time, after the second edition of the tournament was announced by FIBA on Thursday.

The global event has more than doubled in size to 38 teams, from the inaugural tournament, which took place last June. Ireland will compete in the European Conference, which is due to take place on December 12-13th and will consist of 18 teams.

Selection to represent Ireland at the FIBA Esports Open has been ongoing for the past month, as Basketball Ireland invited applications from the country’s top NBA2K players. Selection has almost been finalised, with a team announcement to be made in the coming weeks.

Basketball Ireland CEO, Bernard O’Byrne, said: “We’re excited to part of FIBA’s Esports Open for the first time this year. Our preparations are underway and we wish the players who will be representing Ireland the best of luck.”

ESPORTS BACKED BY LONDON MAYOR TO TACKLE YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT

The Mayor of London has joined forces with grassroots esports organisation LDN UTD to provide participants from across the city with a unique opportunity to pursue a career in one of the world’s fastest-growing industries.

Young people across four London boroughs will be able to sign up to a range of digital workshops, hosted in partnership with Staffordshire University London, Salford University and the University of East London.

The workshops will be themed around a variety of topics including video editing, social media management and graphic design – all skills that have been a contributing factor in making esports a billion-pound industry worldwide, with global audiences eclipsing 500 million already in 2020.

Each workshop is designed to give participants a taste of the skills required to forge a career in that given industry, and how those skills are transferable into the world of esports.

In tandem with the digital workshops, budding gamers from the four Boroughs will go head-to-head in the inaugural LDN UTD Inter-Borough Esports Championships, which will give players the option of competing in either FIFA ‘21 or NBA 2K from 5th – 19th December. The tournament will be broadcast live across streaming platform Twitch.

Is this something which Dublin could emulate, perhaps in partnership with a number of the gaming companies that are based here?

It is worth exploring.

BECKHAM SECURES €18 MILLION FOR ESPORTS DEAL

David Beckham has been revealed as being guaranteed a sum of €18 million over five years by Guild Esports, the team which raised €45 million with a listing on the London Stock Exchange last month.

Sport for Business Partners