ESL Gaming to Offer NFTs at Flagship E-Sports Event

ESL Gaming has partnered with Immutable X to offer NFT minting and trading on its e-sports platform. 

Leading E-Sports Company to Offer NFTs

ESL Gaming, one of the world’s biggest e-sports companies, is launching an NFT platform. The move is the result of a partnership with Immutable X, a StarkWare-powered NFT project running on Layer Two Ethereum.

The platform will offer collectible NFTs and launch alongside the ESL Pro Tour CS:GO gaming competition. The event is the firm’s flagship tournament.

For the 2022 edition, fans will be offered unique digital collectibles curated from the event. 

Commenting on the partnership with Immutable X, ESL Gaming global business development representative Bernhard Mogk said: 

“We could not be more excited to launch on Immutable X the best possible community-driven and fan-centric collectible platform to buy, collect, and own some of the most memorable moments in ESL Pro Tour history.”

NFTs are non-fungible tokens, unique crypto assets that are not interchangeable from one another. NFTs are a way of offering verifiable ownership of an asset such as digital art, music, or in-game items. In the last year, the technology has exploded in popularity, gaining wide adoption in the sports and gaming industries. Most NFTs are minted on Ethereum, the most widely used blockchain today. However, Ethereum’s popularity means that it suffers from issues like high transaction costs. Many NFT projects have looked to scaling solutions like Polygon and Immutable X’s Layer 2 solution to mitigate the issues. 

Immutable X leverages StarkWare’s ZK-Rollup technology to offer high-speed transactions and boasts zero gas fees. It has also partnered with Trace and Cool Effect to offset its carbon footprint so that NFTs minted on the platform are carbon neutral. It’s previously integrated the NFT marketplace OpenSea and powers TikTok’s NFT recent venture, as well as games like Guild of Guardians, Illuvium, and its own Gods Unchained. Last month, Immutable raised $60 million in a Series B funding round co-led by BITKRAFT Ventures and King River Capital.

Discussing the collaboration with ESL Gaming, Immutable X co-founder Robbie Ferguson said:

“ESL’s vision for NFTs from ESL Pro Tour moments has the fans’ experience top of mind. At Immutable X, we make it easy for leading gaming partners like ESL to integrate NFTs into their experiences without sacrificing security or speed.” 

ESL Gaming’s ESL Pro Tour CS:GO is one of the world’s most popular e-sports events. Last year’s edition generated 675 million social media impressions and 905 million video plays, per ESL Gaming’s press release.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this feature owned ETH and other tokens.