The WFH League, a joint venture between Esports Insider and Platform, is back for a second season.
The ‘Work From Home, Win From Home’ league is for people to take part and represent their companies across games; this season those will be Rocket League (3v3), Mortal Kombat, and we’re bringing back CS:GO (Wingman).
The first season, which saw 16 teams compete in CS:GO and FIFA 20 in late May 2020, generated 40,000 minutes watched across over 18 hours of live broadcast, and produced more than 400,000 organic impressions on social media. Season 2 will take place online between September 28th through October 14th, on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings (BST), culminating in a Grand Finals Day on October 18th, 2020.
The core pillars of WFH are fourfold; Connective, Experience, Inclusive, and Understanding. The aim of this is for it to be the most fun esports industry-related networking all year; it’s for those outside the space just as much as it is for those working in it already. We want to provide a positive and fun experience, it’s competitive (more so than we thought after Season 1…) but casual, and we’re determined to ensure it is a fully-open space, where all feel welcome, esports can – and should be – more of a champion of diversity and that’s what we want to ensure here.
Finally, one thing WFH League is perhaps fairly uniquely placed to offer is a greater understanding of the wider esports ecosystem. It provides invaluable insight into esports in its purest form; organised, grassroots competition, and we want it to be utilised by companies for just this purpose.
Sam Cooke, Managing Director and Co-founder of Esports Insider, stated: “Season 1 went better than we ever thought feasible to be frank, thanks to a combination of our team members, especially Jacob and Alex, all the casters and organisational partners such as Playbox. It was very much a ‘test the waters’ run, but we delivered a great and worthwhile experience that people seem to want more of based on the feedback from all involved! In addition, we raised over £1,200 to help support in a small way the excellent work that Special Effect continue to do.
“Based on our learnings from it we also feel far better prepared heading into Season 2, so confident – in fact – we’ve added a third game, and moreover I’m fairly in love with our new design and the WFH League world that DLC Studios built for us.”
Nicolo Portunato, Co-founder and COO at Platform, noted: “On behalf of Platform and ESI, we would like to thank the sponsors, partners and the community after the success of Season 1, it wouldn’t have been possible without them. We were pleased that they’ve been asking for more, therefore, Platform and ESI have collected all the feedback before-during-after Season 1 in order to improve the experience. This is the reason why we have decided to rebrand the tournament and add new games.”
“We’ve chosen Rocket League, CSGO and Mortal Kombat 11 for Season 2 to add variety to the league, have more teams involved and add some fun for people watching and supporting their friends/colleagues participating”