The Dutch football league Eredivisie has created E-Divisie, an eSports competition among FIFA gamers, the league announced.
Players from the Eredivisie’s 18 football clubs will compete for the title in FIFA 17 Ultimate Team beginning Feb. 6. At the start of Eredivisie’s season, those 18 teams each chose an eSports player within the club who would compete in E-Divisie.
The tournament itself can be viewed multiple ways: via YouTube, Twitch and, most notably, Fox Sports Netherlands, which began carrying eSports last March. A year ago, it entered into the eSports realm by broadcasting a college League of Legends competition in addition to the brief FIFA Interactive World Cup. Its decision to show E-Divisie signals an increasing commitment by a major sports channel to broadcast eSports.
Jurian Van de Meer, the commercial director of the Dutch production company Endemol Shine Nederland, which produces Fox Sports Eredivisie, said in a statement, “Producing content for different platforms is perfectly in line with our current strategy and we have built up the necessary expertise in the field of sports as well as online gaming. It all comes together in this collaboration and we are also looking forward to making the E-Divisie a huge success.”
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The Eredivisie is following in the footsteps of its French counterpart with its creation of the E-Divisie, as it is almost identical in structure to eLigue 1 created by Ligue 1. In France’s league that was announced in October, each of the 20 clubs has two eSports players, one each for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. In E-Divisie, each team will have its one player, who will have the opportunity, should he win after 17 rounds of the FIFA game, to advance to the European championship, where he would probably run into a player from the eLigue. However, the E-Divisie’s structure, wherein its players are on the rosters of its 18 clubs, is unique, the Eredivisie said.
The E-Divisie will officially launch Feb. 1 with the announcement of the players and the competition and broadcast schedule.