ESL, the world's largest esports company, and SLIVER.tv, the leading esports 360º virtual reality entertainment platform, are partnering to launch the first virtual esports stadium experience to fans worldwide in 360° Virtual Reality at the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) World Championship 2017 held on February 25-26 and March 3-5 in Katowice, Poland.
While IEM Katowice 2017 is expected to far surpass last year’s 113,000 attendees in the Spodek Katowice stadium, many more millions of fans globally will be watching Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) and League of Legends (LoL) live streams online and in 360° Virtual Reality on SLIVER.tv.
SLIVER.tv’s new virtual esports stadium experience captures the excitement of being at the event with thousands of fans and brings that energy into an immersive 360° VR space. The live interactive stadium will feature dynamic lighting that is synchronized and changes as the game is played, capturing the mood of the match. Online viewers will see their avatars in the 360° VR stadium, interact with other live viewers through emoji’s, view each other’s gamer profile via integration with Valve’s Steam API and access live stats, replays and scores in real-time.
Ulrich Schulze, Vice President Pro Gaming at ESL, said: "The IEM World Championship is one of ESL’s most prestigious events and is coming back bigger than ever in 2017 with competitions taking place over two weekends for the first time. We always aim to echo the passion and energy of our fans in the stadium with our online viewing experiences and are excited to extend the feeling of being in the crowd to the IEM VR livestreams.”
Mitch Liu, co-founder and CEO of SLIVER.tv, said: “We’ve had an amazing product development partnership with ESL thus far and are thrilled to bring to market the first virtual stadium experience in 360° VR. We’re excited to take this first step towards making esports spectating into a highly social, live, and engaging experience to CS:GO and LoL fans worldwide. This is an integral part of our mission to transform the interactive esports entertainment industry.”
This announcement follows the recent introduction of new IEM certified PCs. Marked with an exclusive IEM-certified badge, these PCs provide gamers everything they need to fully immerse themselves in their favorite game, including VR-ready specs courtesy of Intel’s new 7th Gen Intel Core processors or an Intel Core i7 processor Extreme Edition. Part of the proceeds from the IEM certified PCs will go to the prize purse at the 2017 World Championship.