Mumbai: Inox Leisure and Esports Federation of India (ESFI) on Monday announced their partnership that will witness Inox providing a community viewing experience of esports tournaments on the big screen.
As an exclusive cinema partner, Inox will host and promote ESFI tournaments across the country. “This will help in building awareness and popularising esports besides offering world-class cinemas as esports and video gaming venues in cities all over India,” said the statement.
Inox has supported Indian sports through various collaborations, including its longstanding partnership with the Indian Olympic Association. Inox and ESFI together aim to take esports to the masses using Inox cinemas as venues for hosting esports tournaments, streaming of live tournaments, providing training opportunities, and offering a talent scouting platform for future global events.
“We are thrilled to bring the action of esports to the cinemas of Inox in collaboration with Esports Federation of India who has been working relentlessly to grow Indian esports and together, make esports, a mainstream sporting activity in India,” said Inox Leisure's chief executive officer Alok Tandon. “With this association, we will build more esports IPs and who knows with our initiatives we can unearth a Neeraj Chopra or Abhinav Bindra in esports for our country.”
“The exclusive partnership comes at a very right time when Asian Games is scheduled in the month of September and ESFI will soon launch ‘AESF’s Road to Asian Games’ to select the national esports contingent of our country. This partnership will see both ESFI and Inox together nurturing and developing the Indian esports talent pool wherein ESFI will bring more partners to further strengthen this objective and create a robust and thriving esports ecosystem,” said ESFI president and Olympic Council of Asia – NOC and international relations director Vinod Tiwari.
As per the E&Y report, India currently has more than 1,50,000 professional esports players that have generated a viewership of 17 million people across 14 broadcast platforms, and the forecast is to have 1.5 million professional players with 85 million viewership from 20+ broadcasters by FY2025.
The association will enable Inox to engage and offer an enticing content proposition to the age bracket of 15-24 years by promoting this new age sport that has the potential to garner a huge fan base and is expected to reach Rs 11 billion by FY2025 as per industry data.
Through this partnership, Inox and ESFI will be jointly hosting city tournaments and building various esports IPs in order to intensify its growth, not just at the elite, but also at the grassroots level. The objective will be to introduce the charm of gamers and gaming enthusiasts, across the country, to take part in online as well as in-cinema tournaments, said the statement.
