Guild Esports (LON:GILD ) said its third professional team has signed to compete in Valorant, a major new multiplayer tactical shooter game launched by Riot Games in June this year.
The deal marks the first new team signing by Guild since its flotation earlier this month. Its statement also outlined that no consideration is being paid by Guild for this acquisition.
The Valorant players will join Guild's existing teams competing in Rocket League, a motor-racing and soccer hybrid game, and FIFA, the eponymous football franchise.
Source:Riot Games
The five-player team achieved success by finishing in the top two in the Ignition Series and Mandatory.gg Cup tournaments. Players Yacine Laghmari 'Yacine', Malkolm Rench 'Bonkar', Leo Janneson 'Leo', William Sundin 'Draken', and Filip Gauffin 'Goffe' will kick off their career under the Guild banner in the inaugural First Strike Valorant tournament.
The qualifying round for the European leg of First Strike, the first major international tournament being organised by Riot Games, commences in early November 2020.
Shares in Guild Esports have traded within a range of 7.10p and 7.85p over the past two weeks to open 2.36% higher at 7.37p this morning following the announcement.
The competition will crown the first Valorant champions via multiple regional finals taking place from 3 to 6 December 2020. The Company stated that each final will feature the top eight teams from the region, who will earn their spots via a series of merit-based qualifiers.
The total prize pool for Valorant across all tournaments to date is estimated at $1.8m excluding the yet to be disclosed prize money for the upcoming First Strike tournament. All players have signed a one-year contract with an option to renew for another year.
Guild believes that its move into Valorant will enhance its social media reach, particularly Twitch, a live streaming service. The team’s five players have a combined social media following of approximately 400,000 across all social channels, including the Twitch platform.
Valorant currently has an average of 70,000 viewers per day on Twitch, a platform which is operated by a subsidiary of Amazon, making it the platform's eighth most popular title.
Guild said Valorant is expected to show strong long-term growth in streaming and esports viewership. During the beta stage Valorant attracted a record single day viewership of 34m hours on Twitch, beating its previous record of 12 million hours, according to industry data.
The esports group announced yesterday that it had signed a £3.6m deal, its first sponsorship since its IPO, with a company whose name will be unveiled at a ‘global event’ next month.
Guild, which is co-owned by David Beckman and is the first online gaming firm to join the LSE successfully completed its public market flotation earlier this month after raising £20m.
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