Globe Gaming launches in partnership with top gaming industry players
The gaming world in the Philippines will get a huge boost as Globe Telecom launches Globe Gaming in partnership with well known global industry players like Mineski, Riot Games, and Garena.
Globe Gaming is a holistic program designed to provide gamers and fans access to the latest titles, local, regional and global esports competitions, original content, and exclusive programming. It also means that Globe and its partners will support the gaming and esports industry by providing fully optimized internet connectivity for interruption-less gaming. They will also bring world class gaming events and tournaments to the Philippines, a great way to level up the gaming skills of Filipino gamers.
At the launch, Globe President and CEO, Ernest Cu, talked about their vision to bring gaming and esports into homes, mobile devices, malls, and competition venues.
Mineski and MET (Mineski Events Team), the premier Philippine esports organizations, were represented at the launch by the ‘founding father of Philippine esports’, Ronald “Rhom” Robins. As part of a multi-year, exclusive partnership, Globe and Mineski plan to collaborate on the formation and training of an esports team that will compete in regional and global events. The parties will co-produce the Globe Philippine Pro Gaming League, a multi-title competition offering teams the opportunity to be crowned ‘Best in the Philippines’ while earning advancement to elite tournaments. In addition, Globe and Mineski will bring back the MET-owned Manila Masters in 2019.
I happened to bump into Rhom Robins along one of the corridors of Globe so we stopped and talked a while. I was happy to learn that part of his organization’s efforts are geared towards responsible gaming aside from helping gamers gain leadership and strategy skills for competition.
Globe also inked a first-of-its-kind partnership with Garena, a leading Southeast Asian game publisher. Jason Ng, Vice President-Group Game Operations, Garena, talked about the partnership which will include marketing, competitions, and content production for the leading mobile game, Arena of Valor (AoV). Both companies plan to introduce a series of ‘Valor Cup’ esports tournaments where teams will compete for entry into the Arena of Valor World Championships which will be held in Los Angeles in July and where $500,000 prize money will be at stake.
In addition, the partnership of Globe and Garena extends to the Riot Games-owned title, League of Legends (Lol). League of Legends is the world’s most played PC game with over 100 million active monthly users worldwide. Johnson Yeh, Managing Director of Riot Games for Greater China and Southeast Asia, affirmed that “sharing a mindset is critical to any partnership…” and he believes that “Globe shares (the) vision in building for the long term growth of esports across the region”.
Garena and Riot plan to introduce a multi-country tournament structure where the winning team gains entry into the League of Legends World Championships. The tourney, known as the SEA Tour, will lead to the first ever regional championship in Manila in August 2018, which will be known as the Globe Conquerors Manila. This will be the region’s leading sanctioned, competitive League of Legends event.
