FSDL looks to widen eISL’s reach

FSDL partnered with EA Sports and Nodwin Gaming to launch eISL in 2021. eISL is India’s official qualifying event for the FIFA Global Series. The second edition of the tournament concluded last month, with North East United FC being crowned champions.

“Growing eISL’s scale wider will require us to move away from Play Station and move into the mobile gaming space,” a senior FSDL official said, adding, “It’s something that we will consider as long as we are also dependent on the game publisher.”

The official added that the Play Station is very expensive hardware to own in the Indian context. “On average, there are 80,000 people in India who have Play Stations and who play all other sports on that platform.”

The official stated that the game developer will need to have a viable mobile gaming esports platform or a mobile-based esports game for eISL. “With FIFA, we don’t have that opportunity. But the intent is to go mobile because India is primarily a mobile-first market.”

FSDL’s aim is to attract the attention of a young audience segment with eISL. “Right now, we are catering to people who want to watch eISL since it is played on the Play Station. Mobile will help us grow participation in eISL,” the official said.The second edition of the eISL saw interest from 1500 players who wanted to participate in the competition. With two players assigned to each of the ISL teams, the11 clubs had 22 esports players who competed over a 2.5-month duration. A total of 650 goals were scored during the tournament.

The esports event was live-streamed on YouTube, while video content was also distributed through Instagram. On YouTube, the event’s live stream garnered 585,000 views, while the video content had 6.7 million views. It also garnered 9.8 million views on Instagram and 3.5 million impressions.

“We decided to live stream the eISL on YouTube, but we also had eISL-led communication on Instagram. The live streaming was available on ISL’s YouTube channel as well as the YouTube channels of the clubs,” the official said.

eISL’s core audience is males in the 16–24 age groups across metros and states like Kerala, where football is one of the most popular sports.

While eISL is being used to build engagement for the football league on digital platforms, the organisers want the esports tournament to become self-sustaining in the coming years.

In the first season of eISL, the organisers had roped in two sponsors, Coca-Cola, and Terra Virtua. Due to covid-19 related restrictions, the on-ground event was played in a bubble in Delhi for three months. The second season was mostly played virtually while the final and playoffs were played on-ground in the capital.