Tournament organiser DreamHack has partnered with Swedish Elite Football to launch the eAllsvenskan.
The competition will see 12 Swedish football clubs battle it out on FIFA 19 as part of the Global Series. Each team will field between two to five players.
Tomas Lyckedal, Chief Strategy Officer at DreamHack said the following: ”We have a great opportunity to do something extraordinary with this and at the same time tie the esports with the real football once and for all and attract new target groups for each other. It will ultimately benefit everyone.”
The clubs that will take part in eAllsvenskan are as follows: Allmänna Idrottsklubben (AIK), Djurgårdens IF, Hammarby IF, Örebro SK, Östersunds FK, GIF Sundsvall, Örgryte IS, BK Häcken, Helsingborg IF, Jönköping Södra IF, Malmö FF and AFC Eskilstuna.
Mats Enquist, Secretary General at Swedish Elite Football discussed the league: ”It is time to take esports seriously and discover the possibilities of having a strong brand in this world as well. It is the right thing to do and I am happy that the clubs want to join in. It will be an exciting league to follow and I believe that eAllsvenskan can become something really big.”
Swedish Elite Football is an organisation that represents each of the 32 football clubs in Sweden’s top two football divisions, Allsvenskan and Superettan. It works alongside the Swedish Football Association to develop the top flight of the country’s football ecosystem.
Varmt välkomna till de 12 klubbar som är klara för eAllsvenskan, FIFA 19??? pic.twitter.com/xm3kY2Jk96
— eAllsvenskan (@eAllsvenskan) January 30, 2019
All of the matches that take place within the eAllsvenskan will be broadcast on streaming platform Dplay, with select matches also being shown on Swedish free-to-air television channel Kanal 9.
Hanif Hosseini, Sports Manager at Eurosport and Discovery Networks Sweden also commented: ”Within less than a year we will hold the rights to Sweden’s best football league, Allsvenskan, and begin to broadcast this league, so we feel very inspired to also invest heavily in eAllsvenskan. Esports is one of the fastest growing sports in the world today. This venture together with SEF and Dreamhack feels incredibly cool.”
All of the teams will play eleven games – each of which consists of two matches – with the top eight advancing to the Grand Finals on May 26th. The total prize pool for the eAllsvenskan is 500,000 SEK (£42,303.96)
In October 2018, DreamHack partnered with Discovery Networks Denmark to launch a similar venture known as the eSuperliga. The FIFA 19 league is the virtual version of Denmark’s Superliga football competition.
Esports Insider says: It’s nothing new at this point to see a country’s top football league enter esports through FIFA but it’s still interesting nonetheless. DreamHack is a proven tournament organiser so that’s a pretty decent start. FIFA is quickly building up an intriguing virtual competitive ecosystem that’s beginning to mirror football itself.