ESL Faceit Group have announced that they have partnered with Activision to bring Call of Duty: Mobile to their Mobile Masters esports series.
Established last year, the Snapdragon Pro Series is a collaboration between ESL Faceit Group (EFG), and Qualcomm. The announcements comes alongside the addition of Garena: Fire to the Mobile Masters catalogue and Moonton’s Mobile Legends: Bang Bang hosting their own stand-alone stadium event, the first for EFG. In addition to this, the Snapdragon Pro Series will also be expanding to Latin America. All culminating with a reported prize pool of $2.5m.
With the new titles, EFG will also be bringing on a new vice president of game systems for mobile, Sam Braithwaite, having previously served as Activision Blizzard’s global director of esports for Hearthstone and World of Warcraft amongst others. He commented, “Year 2 of the Snapdragon Pro Series aims to raise the bar for competition and accessibility and build upon the success and momentum of the first year of the program.
“Alongside Qualcomm Technologies and Samsung, we’re continuing to expand opportunities for mobile gamers by offering more games and more ways to compete than ever before.”
Global heavyweight
While neither Snapdragon or EFG are names alien to the esports scene, this latest partnership indicates that the championship is growing rapidly. At a time when esports are facing serious reality-checks from sponsors and audiences alike, mobile esports have defied many of these trends due to their accessibility and popularity in regions such as Asia where viewership is extremely high.
The decision to expand the Snapdragon Pro Series to Latin America also speaks volumes of the importance this market now holds in terms of the interest from international companies with regards to gaming. Major events such as Aquiris joining the Epic Games family to become Epic Games Brasil have been an increasing indicator of the attention gaming is getting in LatAm.
Overall, as the Snapdragon Pro Series comes into year 2, boasting their partnership with Samsung and now with even more gaming heavyweights could it be that mobile esports are the way of the future?