Esports brand launches tournaments at high schools
Gank launches High School Esports League at Parktown Boys’ High School to grow professional gamers.
Parktown Boys’ High School was host to the launch of the High School Esports League on July 24.
Gank, a gaming lifestyle and Esports culture brand will host gaming tournaments with the aim of helping build a thriving professional sector in eGaming.
Director of Gank, Marc Joubert said they would host gaming tournaments as part of a content creation strategy for their Fite Sports TV Show, with the first tournament having been in early 2020, just before lockdown.
Joubert said, “So, it’s a very niche community of gamers that like the fighting, one on one, games. We play on PlayStation 4s and also on some PCs. The whole idea is just to grow the community because the reality is that we’ve got semi-professional gamers in this room that have represented South Africa at the highest level overseas.”
He added South Africa had a lead top Street Fighter V gamer and a top Tekken gamer who had represented the country in the Red Bull Kumite last year.
He said, however, that these gamers were not true professionals. “So we don’t really have a true professional gaming set in this country where guys wake up and pay their bills through gaming. This is where we started putting out prize money and assisting them to grow their skill set and get youngsters in.
“We have learners and we see more of them come in to start improving their skills to eventually participate in the international tournaments around the world. We started a monthly tournament series in February this year and we’ve hosted one every single month and we’ve got five more tournaments after this till December.”
Joubert said the prize that each of the participants would be competing for was R5 000 which would be split between the first, second and third-placed gamers.
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