Infofed Co, an e-sports startup, holds the University E-sports Championship (UEC) paving the way for international stage within three years to capitalise on the 30 billion baht global market.
It plans to embrace virtual reality (VR) for gamecasting to debut in Thailand soon.
The company wants to build e-sports into a tourism subset and encourage a new professional workforce.
E-sports is a growing business as there are at least 10 million gamers in Thailand, of which half are categorised as serious gamers who play for competition, said
Jirayod Theppipit, chief executive and founder of Infofed, which operates the first e-sports arena in the country said the UEC which is the first time in Thailand would like the have the e-sports been career and opportunity for e-sports gamers.
Thailand’s first full-scale university e-sports league, in which the majority of gamers are 18-25. Three popular games are Arena of Valor (ROV), Player Unknown Battleground Mobile (PUBG) Mobile and Overwatch. The total prize for the winner is 1 million baht including a trip to go to G-Star game in South Korea. Application is available on www.UEC.live
He said that e-sports will grow at a large scale, in Thailand the growth this year is expected to be 50%, from 30% growth last year. Globally, e-sports revenue is estimated to be 30 billion baht, of which the US makes up 30% and Asia 40%, mainly China and South Korea.
“We organise the UEC with universities nationwide and by the end this year we will launch a CLMV e-sports league (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam) and another in Southeast Asia by 2020,” he said.
The company wants to develop VR for game casters to build new experiences bridging online and offline.
Recently, KK Fund, a Singapore-based venture capital fund, invested in a seed round of the company with a 25% share. The funds will be used to arrange the UEC and develop a studio, production and platform for e-sports competitions, hoping to achieve 200% revenue growth this year.
