A couple of days ago, McDonald’s had officially partnered with LaLiga, the professional Spanish football league, to bring the first major project from LaLiga eSports into Spain! Along with the Professional Videogame League (LVP), it was also part of Mediapro’s strategy to bring the official EA Sports FIFA 18 Global Series on the road to the FIFA eWorld Cup 2018.

LaLiga’s Spanish representatives will be selected for the EA Sports FIFA 18 Global Series Playoffs that will be held in June which leads to the FIFA eWorld Cup 2018. Representatives who take part at the Playoffs will climb up the ladder to the FIFA eWorld Cup tournament to compete for the EA Sports FIFA World Champion title. The tournament will consist of an online qualification stage and an in-person final stage which includes Xbox and PlayStation categories where players can register on their official site.

The first stage will kick off on next week, 19th March, it is open to all gamers over the age of 16 which will take place online on ArenaGG, the gaming platform by LVP. There will be thirty-two places at the in-person stage which are broken down to 16 players for Xbox and 15 players for PlayStation (+1 from the McDonald’s exclusive tournament). While the second part of the tournament scheduled on the 16th April, will be played in-person in Barcelona. The 16 players from each platform that got through will compete each week in a straight knockout round before claiming a spot in the EA Sports FIFA 18 Global Series Playoffs.

In addition to that, McDonald’s will also be organizing an exclusive tournament which will have the highest-placed participant to be placed with one of the 16 places at the McDonald’s Virtual LaLiga eSports final stage. McDonald’s will be featured in the competition as LaLiga’s main partner in the eSports universe. Furthermore, El Corte Ingles, Allianz, Hyundai and Orange are also involved in LaLiga’s first foray in the world of eSports.

The eSports world has been growing tremendously in which giant companies like McDonald’s from the F&B industry to be involving in eSports. With the rising recognition of eSports in the world, we should be seeing more giant companies from different industries to be involved in the eSports universe. Though currently McDonald’s of Spain has joined hands with LaLiga and LVP, will we see that in Malaysia too?

Seeing the growth of eSports tournaments rising in Malaysia, there is a possibility that we could also be seeing giant companies of Malaysia to be partnering with, for example, MSI, Garena, or even MSN (Majlis Sukan Negara) to hold an eSports event in Malaysia. As Malaysia is also getting recognized globally in the eSports arena like DoTA2, LoL and CS:GO, this could be a great opportunity for Malaysian talents to expose and make known themselves in the eSports industry.