ABOUT US
Our Vision
Make the world a happier place.
Our Mission
Provide, improve, and expand the esports experience for everyone, including every player, fan, and the community of every esports game.
Our View
At ESA our drive is to make the world a happier place; It directs everything we do. We believe sports poses a rare ability to connect, unite, entertain, bring joy to, and inspire people and communities around the world. The greater we can support, grow and make sports more accessible, the greater we can take advantage of those abilities to help make the world a happier place.
At ESA we believe esports have boundless potential and the ability to become one of the leading forces in helping sports make the world a happier place. We believe esports have many unique opportunities that stem from the ability to be played online and the accessibility that provides. Esports greatest strength is the connections that are made possible through it. Esports connect everyone. Everyone can play with, compete against, and build relationships with anyone. Everyone can learn, improve their skills, chase their goals, and even have the opportunity to become a professional. It doesn't matter where someone is, their age, their race, their gender, their background, or their skills; everyone can be a part of and grow within the esports community. This enables esports to foster amazing communities that are unlike any other sport.
At ESA we believe support for amateur sports are the key to growing sports and building amazing communities, but as of now amateur esports have no support. Unlike traditional sports, esports does not have schools, youth organizations, or an older generation who support and organize amateur sport for the love and good of the community. Compared to many traditional sports amateur esports is not limited to the youth or bound by physical barriers. Esports accessibility and its unique ability to connect people should make the amateur community one of esports greatest strengths, but as of now it has become esports greatest weakness. Traditional sports would not survive without a thriving amateur community, and esports will not survive without it either.
At ESA we believe that for esports to truly reach its potential, it must embrace and support everyone, every community, and every level of competition. The greater support for everyone and every community, the more the sport will grow, the deeper the love will be for the sport, the more people will be positively impacted, and the more joy the sport can provide, helping make the world a happier place. ESA was designed and is dedicated to doing just that. To provide, improve, and expand the esports experience for everyone, including every player, fan, and the community of every esports game. That is our mission.
Our History
Inception
In June 2017, ESA was accidentally created, running its first league for Rainbow Six Siege under the name SCS, the Siege Contender Series. At the time, there were no amateur leagues for Rainbow Six Siege that provided esports players with opportunities to compete in the game they loved. SCS began without any ambitions of becoming a company, but as a small, casual league hoping to provide the esports experience to a handful of friendly teams. It wouldn’t stay that way for long.
Over the next two months, as SCS hosted its first season, the Rainbow Six Siege community took notice, and it was excited. Each week, more and more people started watching SCS matches, and more and more teams started asking to join in the league’s next season. After the first season was complete SCS officially became known as ESA, E Sport Association. What began as a small side project had turned into something much greater.
Expansion
ESA grew quickly. In October of 2017, ESA began its second season, continuing to host the contender series. In January of 2018, as ESA began its third season, ESA added a second league, the Champion Series. In April of 2018, as ESA began its fourth season, ESA added a third league, the Rival Series. In July of 2018, as ESA began its fifth season, ESA added its fourth league, and its first European league, the European Champion Series. Finally, in July of 2019, as ESA began its ninth season, ESA added its fifth league, the European Contender Series.
ESA continued to run the North American Rival Series, the European and North American Contender Series, and the European And North American Champion Series for eight more seasons. Over that time ESA’s popularity grew every season.
At the beginning of each season, ESA held a double elimination qualifier tournament that offered new teams an opportunity to earn a position in one of the leagues. These tournaments saw up to 200 teams participating at a time. During the season every match across every league was broadcasted. Each week featured four days with fourteen hours of matches and two days with seven hours of matches broadcasted. ESA operated and broadcasted matches 40 weeks a year.
Overall, ESA hosted 16 seasons with 54 leagues and 44 tournaments. More than 3,500 players participate in its leagues, and more than 11,500 players participate in its tournaments, with players from over 25 countries. ESA broadcast matches 275 hours a month, bringing in over 85,000 views a month, and over 1 million broadcast minutes watched a month, from over 40,000 followers across various platforms. Achieving all of this required an extraordinary team of up to 50 ESA team members from 15 countries.
Evolution
After sixteen seasons of leagues ESA stopped hosting all leagues. The mission of ESA to Provide, improve, and expand the esport experience for everyone at every level of every esport game remained, but ESA was far from achieving that mission, and ESA would not have been able to continue to work to achieve that mission by continuing with the strategy in place at the time. ESA was completely self funded, and all of its available resources were engaged in maintaining the operation of the ongoing leagues, leaving no time or money available to dedicate to improving its current league or expanding to more leagues, both of which being necessary to achieving ESA’s mission.
ESA has a plan in place to overcome this challenge, and over the past two years ESA has been working hard behind the scenes to realize this plan. A small part of this plan includes a complete overhaul to ESA’s production quality, bringing it in line with the best of the best in the broadcast industry. You may see this production overhaul on display in future ESA tournaments and special events.
You can get a preview of some of these production improvements by checking out the Sneak Peek page.