E-sports is one of the fastest-growing industries globally and Perth is looking to be at the forefront.
E-sports is the new NBA, NFL, AFL and NRL, all rolled into one.
Think that’s a big call? E-sports is one of the fastest-growing industries globally, projected to hit $2B in revenue in 2022, Australia and more specifically Perth are on the hunt for the rising stars and key emerging talent to represent Aussie gamers on the world stage.
Perth will be essential to the future success of e-sports in Australia – with its proximity to the larger Asia market, Perth has the opportunity to become Australia’s e-sports hub.
Enter Perth internet provider Pentanet who is bringing internet up to speed, has built their own e-sports team Pentanet.GG – the Australian #6 world-ranked e-sports team who are making global waves in the realm of e-sports.
On Sunday (22nd May), the full Pentanet.GG team and coach played host to a gaming workshop at Pentanet Headquarters in the CBD, with eight participants hand-selected from Australia’s most-promising gaming talent pool.
Held in WA, the team put the rising stars through their paces with battles, strategy sessions, and coaching techniques with $500 prize money up for grabs.
“The workshop was an absolute blast, it was great to meet some of the Pentanet family who we’d never normally get to see in person. The vibes were good, the games were close, and watching the PGG boys coaching the up-and-comers in the workshop was really fun. Tons of esports potential in that room! Hopefully, we get to see some more faces at future events,” said Scott Farmer, Pentanet.GG General Manager.
Taking out the prize money and putting their name up in lights in front of the Pentanet.GG team was the team of ZombiSlayer (Ryan Sheam), Frosted (James Howson), N1cbr0 (Nicholas Chong), FelixEdwardson (Lewis Wood) and Hayhay110 (Hayden Longfield).
To cap off the weekend of e-sports activities, Pentanet also held a panel discussion at Pentanet Stadium on Monday where the future of e-sports in WA was discussed with VenuesWest CEO Doug and Pentanet MD Stephen Cornish.
“It starts with visibility. We recognise the high-performance nature of esports – the currency of the industry as an emerging landscape is something we want to support,” states Doug Hamilton, GM Commercial, VenuesWest.
Visibility and the narrative of e-sports starts with removing the stigma and misconception that e-sports is just people sitting in a dark room playing games.
E-sports is a high-performance and high-pressure professional sport with individuals going through as much training, physical/mental wellbeing, nutrition, sleep, etc as professional athletes.
There are genuine career options in gaming and e-sports – not just for players, but coaches, support staff, casters, streamers, content creators, influencers and more.
We are at the start of a sporting new era and Perth will be at the forefront for Australian gamers.
Perth has a unique opportunity for our Australian players to play against Asia, where some of the best e-sports players in the world reside. You’re only as good as the players you train with and while there’s a lot of talent here in Australia, training against gamers in the Asia market is a key strategy for talent development, and Perth is the only place in Australia you can do that.
Stephen Cornish, Pentanet MD continued to back Perth’s importance in the e-sports space for Australia while on the panel;
“In the next few years, we want Perth to be on the global map for e-sports. The point of the PGG Connect bootcamp was to test our theory that Perth has a strategic advantage as an e-sports hub due to our equal distance between Asia and Australia’s east coast.
We had to build out the Pentanet network to Singapore to enable this and on the weekend they were scrimmaging against a very strong team from Vietnam, and we were able to win one of the games. It showed Vietnam that we are here, and we have the credibility to train against the region’s top teams.”
Learn more about e-sports and Pentanet.GG.
Sick of slow internet visit pentanet.com.au.
