The Russian Football Premier League (RFPL) e-football cup will be held in Ufa on February 24–26. 16 players will take part in the tournament, each of whom represents one of the clubs in the elite division of the national championship.
TASS talks about the features of eSports competitions and the financial side of professional football simulation games.
Leaders of e-football and their patrons
The most popular and successful lines of football simulators for many years have been the FIFA series (from the Canadian company EA Sports) and Pro Evolution Soccer (abbreviated as PES, developed by the Japanese company Konami). Most of the gaming market belongs to the FIFA series, although the Japanese simulator also has its own audience.
Play e-football with Gianni Infantino (FIFA President - TASS note)? Well, why not. We already played real football with him in the summer
Vitaly Mutko
Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, President of the RFU (December 2016)
The main difference between the two games is the realism of the game model (gameplay) and the tournament license (FIFA owns the rights to most of Europe's leading tournaments, with a total of 35 leagues in the version of the game released in 2016. PES, in turn, owns the rights to the largest club European competitions: the Champions League, Europa League and UEFA Super Cup; from 2011 to 2016, the main club tournament of South America, the Copa Libertadores, was represented in the game).
The FIFA and PES series are supported by various international football organizations. The EA Sports series has received the support of the International Football Federation (FIFA), and the Konami product has received the support of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). The prize money for the winner and finalist of FIFA (2017 FIFA Interactive World Cup) and Pro Evolution Soccer (PES League) tournaments is the same. The champions will receive $200 thousand, and the losers in the final matches will receive $100 thousand.
The selection of participants for cyber football competitions is carried out according to a system that includes several qualifying stages. For example, 32 players will enter the tournament under the auspices of FIFA (16 on PlayStation 4 consoles, 16 on Xbox). The quotas between the participants are divided as follows: ten winners of the European qualification (five players for each of the two types of consoles), eight - American (four participants each), four - the rest of the world (two each on PlayStation and Xbox). Another eight places are reserved for the winners of the Ultimate Team Online Championship in FIFA 17 (four players each). One more place for each console will be up for grabs among e-sportsmen who have signed contracts with real clubs (German Wolfsburg, Spanish Valencia, English Manchester City and Portuguese Sporting).
In addition to tournaments under the auspices of FIFA and UEFA, other international e-football competitions are also held, such as the Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC). His total prize fund in 2016 was $15 thousand, the winner received $8 thousand, the finalist - $4 thousand, and the third place winner - $2 thousand. CSKA cyber player Andrey Guryev was fourth, he earned $1 thousand.
The biggest prize money in eSports
The most profitable games for eSports players are real-time strategy games and role-playing games Dota 2 (the prize fund of the tournament in 2016 was $20.7 million, the winner received $9.1 million) and League of Legends ($5 million and $2 million, respectively), and also first-person shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive ($1.5 million and $800 thousand)
The leadership positions of these games are ensured not only by a large audience, but also by the fact that the game has been operating for many years. It is impossible for sports simulators that are released annually to compete with “long-running” projects in this regard.
History of eSports in Russia
Russia was the first country to recognize computer sports as an official sport. The corresponding order was signed in July 2001 by the head of the Russian State Committee for Physical Education and Sports, Pavel Rozhkov. After the structure was transformed into the Federal Agency for Physical Culture and Sports, as well as the introduction of the All-Russian Register of Sports, the procedure was carried out again in March 2004 by decision of the head of the department, Vyacheslav Fetisov.
In July 2006, this sport was removed from the register because it did not meet the criteria to be included in this list: it was not developed in more than half of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. In addition, there was no specialized all-Russian physical education and sports association registered in the country. In June 2016, the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation returned computer sports to the status of an official sport.
About the RFPL e-football Cup
The draw ceremony will take place on February 24. The first stage, in which the 16 participants will be divided into two groups of eight players (meetings in the "each against each other" format), and the quarter-final meetings (starting from this round of a series of best-of-three matches of one of the players) will be held on February 25. The semi-finals and the decisive match of the first official cyber football tournament in Russian history will be held on February 26.
Any direction that interests the fans is important for the club. They like it, which means it should interest us too.<...>The ratings and popularity of eSports do not allow us to remain on the sidelines. That's why we signed contracts with two e-sportsmen at once
Daria Spivak
Marketing Director of FC Lokomotiv
Gaming platform - Sony PlayStation 4 console, simulator for identifying the winner - FIFA 17 produced by EA Sports.
The main goals set for the organizers of the cup: preparing participants for performances at international tournaments, as well as expanding the fan base of Premier League teams by including an audience of computer sports fans.
The winner of the competition will be awarded a cup and a commemorative medal. In addition, the organizing committee of the event reserves the right to establish cash prizes for participants.
Each of the 16 Premier League clubs is represented at the tournament by one e-sportsman. At the competition in Ufa, teams from the elite of Russian football will be represented by the following players:
Contracts with professional e-football players, in particular, were signed by CSKA, Spartak, Zenit and Ufa, while Rostov, Krasnodar, Ural and Krylya Sovetov held regional qualifying competitions that determined the players who their teams will be represented at the RFPL Cup.
The Bashkir cybersportsman also admitted that he does not think about whether his “native walls” will help him. “We will only find out what will actually happen during the tournament,” he concluded.
About the RFPL open e-football championship
At the end of January (PlayStation 4) and beginning of February (Xbox One), qualifying competitions for participation in the FIFA 17 National Open Championship were held. Two players from each qualifying stage advanced to the final part of the tournament. At the decisive stage they will play against representatives of Russian Premier League clubs. The final of the national cyberfootball championship will be held in Kazan in early March (date and place have not yet been determined). In addition to the title, the winner of the championship will receive the right to play in the European qualifying competitions of the interactive World Cup under the auspices of the International Football Federation (FIFA).
The decisive matches of the world e-football championship will be held in London. Their winner will receive an invitation to the FIFA awards ceremony, including the best player of 2017.
Andrey Mikhailov
Compared to real football, virtual football in our country is quite competitive, we even have our own world champions, and Russia was the first to come up with the idea of organizing an e-sports federation. At the end of 2016, six clubs of the Spanish Primera decided to create a championship, we went further (the initiator was Ufa, where the role of Azamat Muratov, the head of the Bashkir branch of the Russian Computer Federation, was important). The first sign was the RFPL Cup, where each team was represented by one eSports player. The question arose, where to get them?
The pioneer in this matter was the same Ufa, which signed a contract last summer with the 2015 FIFA world champion Robert Fakhretdinov. The next step was taken by Spartak, which recruited Sergei Nikiforov, known under the pseudonym “Kefir,” into its ranks. The Red and Whites bet not only on sporting success, but also on media exposure, which allowed them to attract new fans. If anyone doesn’t know, Sergey is a famous blogger, and the main team even takes him to training camps. The remaining clubs followed two paths.
The first is signing contracts with cyber football players whose names are already known to the public. This is exactly what they did in CSKA (Andrey Guryev), Krasnodar (Andrey Konnov), Zenit (Ruslan Yaminov). The second way is for clubs to hold qualifying tournaments. It was used by Terek, Amkar, Anzhi, Ural and other teams. The second option is the most controversial, since the strongest will not always win.
The RFPL has finally decided that eSports is a sport. Here is the argument of RFPL executive director Sergei Cheban: “If it’s competition, if it’s excitement, if one, two, three, several are participating. Of course, sport, how it lights up, what kind of dynamics, in my opinion, sport. Even though it’s a tabletop sport for now, it’s still sport. ".
The status of the event is evidenced by the fact that one of the commentators was Kirill Nabutov, and Gennady Sergeevich Orlov was the guest of honor. During the match between Ufa and Zenit, he enthusiastically applauded Robert Fakhretdinov, who scored one of the goals, having previously assisted his player to score with his heel. Here is what the master of sports journalism thinks about the tournament: “It seems that there are no losers. “Ufa” won (spoiler) the championship place, so everyone should be happy. The guys have a working head, that is, they teach football correctly. This is real football propaganda - tactics , technology, as Sergei Bogdanovich told me, this was his dream team, so that the players would be so technical and tactically competent that cyber football would live in Russia!”
First, a draw took place, dividing the e-football players into two groups. They had to play 7 matches, then quarter-finals (the 4 best teams from each group got into them), semi-finals and final series up to two victories. All virtual players had a fixed rating (85), therefore, for example, the advantage of Zenit over Tom could not be overwhelming.
In Group A, Anton Klenov, representing Lokomotiv, showed the maximum result at the group stage. The two-time national champion “Kefir”, who was always followed by a dozen schoolchildren, took second place, with the players of “Amkar” and “Orenburg” occupying the third and fourth positions, respectively.
But in group “B”, which was noticeably stronger in composition, everything was much more interesting. Its winner was Andrey Konnov from Krasnodar, who had 4 wins and 3 draws. Like the real Krasnodar, the virtual one was noted for its bright play. Just look at the victory over Zenit (4:3) and the draw with CSKA (4:4). Second place with exactly the same number of points was taken by the favorite of the Ufa public, Robert Fakhretdinov, who suffered two defeats (from Rubin and Krasnodar). Third place goes to CSKA, fourth place to Zenit. An interesting fact about Anton Zhukov from Kazan - in 2015 he was disqualified for fixing a game.
The quarterfinals were not without sensations: Konnov from Krasnodar, who had not conceded before, was knocked out by Orenburg representative Kirill Ordinartsev in three matches. “Kefir” also left the tournament at this stage - its “Spartak” was beaten by CSKA. Moreover, the score of the first match was 0:4. The other semi-finalists were players from Loko and Ufa. In the semi-finals, Robert beat Kirill in class, and in the other pair it took all three matches to determine the winner - the e-football player from CSKA was more successful.
In the final, he continued his winning streak, beating the representative of Ufa, for whom the entire audience was rooting (both matches ended with a score of 3:2). We can only hope that Andrey Guryev will not take cyber fourth place in the Cyber Champions League. The last match was watched by the players of the Ufa football club, led by Sergei Semak, who shared his impressions of what he saw: “Thank you to the guys for a very interesting game, they kept us in suspense, our players enjoyed the excellent content and quality of the game, we take note for ourselves where we need to improve. We could bring in some guys as analysts.”
The winner himself comments on his success: “All the matches were quite difficult, I made it through the group very difficult. I won the derby, I can highlight that, the main match with Spartak, this was most memorable. You may not win the tournament, but not win the derby with "Spartak" would be unforgivable."
Separately, it is worth mentioning the audience's interest. By the end of the first day, the number of views stopped at about 3 million people, of which more than 700 thousand were on the VKontakte social network. And the broadcast on Twitch entered the top 10 broadcasts of all games that took place that day, which became a historical achievement for Russian e-football and FIFA 17.
(RFS) and the Computer Sports Federation (FCS) of Russia announced the country's first cyberfootball championship. Following England, France and other leading European football powers, Russia will host the official national championship.
What kind of cyber football?
By analogy with the official name, it is called “interactive football” - in fact, it is a tournament for the computer game FIFA 2018 from Electronic Arts. Back in April of this year, the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation recognized e-sports as a direction being developed at the national level, and already in June it designated e-football as a separate discipline - albeit within the framework of football, not computer sports. That is why both the RFU and the FCC of Russia are jointly responsible for holding official competitions.
What format?
The main beauty of the tournament is that anyone can take part in the qualifying games, and in the final part, representatives of Russian Football Premier League clubs will be waiting for the winners - there the level of participants will be very high. At the qualifying stage, 48 tickets will be played out: 21 people will be selected based on the results of a series of online tournaments, another 27 will receive the right to compete at the Russian Championship based on the results of offline qualifying rounds (the organizers call them Grand Prix), which are timed to coincide with the matches of the national team and key games of the Russian Premier League , but take place directly at the stadiums. Another 16 people representing Premier League clubs will join the winners, and in the final round 64 participants will determine the Russian champion among themselves.
What results did Russia have in e-football before?
About the same as the national team. In none of the 14 world championships held under the auspices of FIFA have the Russians reached the final, although both the USA and Saudi Arabia have won it. At the same time, our players were always among the strongest and periodically gave good results. For example, in 2006, a person with a significant name for domestic football - Viktor "alexx" Gusev - took third place at the World Cyber Games, which in those years was almost the main e-sports tournament in the world.
Where else is e-football taken as seriously as Russia?
In almost all European countries. The main wave began in 2016, when several leading organizations - the English Premier League, the French Ligue 1, and the Dutch Eredivisie - announced the start of e-football championships. The trend quickly spread across Europe, and some teams signed not just one, but several players to their rosters, for example, Roma.
The RFPL Championship and Cup took place at the beginning of 2017, but formally the winner could not be called the champion of Russia. Accordingly, it is the winner of the current Russian cyberfootball championship who will receive this status.
Who to follow?
The main character of Russian cyber football is Andrey "Timon" Guryev. Having started playing FIFA in 2009, today the Nizhny Novgorod resident is not only the strongest player in Russia, but is also among the best players in the world. In 2017, according to the results of the E-football World Cup, which is held by FIFA, Andrei took 11th place out of 32 participants; a year earlier he finished fourth at the Electronic Sports World Cup. At home in 2017, he had no equal: Andrey won victories in the championship and the RFPL Cup, playing for CSKA.
Andrey's main competitor should be Robert "ufenok77" Fakhretdinov. Back in 2014, he took second place at the same ESWC, and last summer he transferred to Lokomotiv from Ufa, for which he played in RFPL tournaments - this was the first official transfer in the history of domestic e-football.
In general, e-football players actively participate in the life of the clubs for which they play. For example, before the match between Lokomotiv and Krasnodar last Monday, everyone could play with Ufenko right in front of the stadium.
When do they play?
At the moment, the names of 18 participants in the final stage are known, and the next online qualifiers will be held on October 28 - everyone is registered at
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