Ukraine’s most decorated Premier League football club and reigning champion FC Dynamo Kyiv, announced its new eSports division last month with the first signing of a Ukrainian FIFA player, Vitaliy “Labotryas” Mukha.
This makes Dynamo the first Ukrainian sports team tackling eSports as it follows in the footsteps of other European clubs including Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain, Valencia CF and Schalke 04.
In addition to those clubs being credited as role models for Dynamo, the club stated in its press conference that another reason for creating this eSports team was to provide a place for local Ukrainian players to play instead of them having to play for foreign organizations due to the lack of local teams.
Muhka is the 2016 champion of Ukraine, the 2015 runner-up as well, and the winner of 12 out of 15 FIFA 16 tournaments in 2016.
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It was also mentioned that eSports is not officially acknowledged in the Ukraine unlike in other countries where it is recognized. However, that will not stop the club from participating in worldwide tournament and friendly competitions in 2017.
The club also said that it is considering acquiring a team to participate in the upcoming Dota 2 Kiev Major tournament in April and others of its kind like LoL, CS:GO and more.
For plans further down the line, Ivan Bulavka, who initiated Dynamo joining the “eFootball” world, says that there could be an eSports training school and much more to make this a true business platform.
“One of our tasks is to form Dynamo eSports school and develop it just like football Academy is being developed,” he said. “We have a plan for the forthcoming year and three-year strategy. We want to arrange big eSports tournaments in Ukraine. It’s a business project, so we don’t want to lay our cards on the table at once.”