Team Union Gaming Crowned Champions of Six Major, South Asia Regional Division.

Team Union Gaming a Sri Lankan based Esports organization, made history as they have crowned champions of the Six Major, South Asia Regional Division by performing a clean sweep of their competition, which no other team has accomplished prior. Team Union Gaming proved to be a dominating force quickly dispatching the favored team and current National Champions that they lost to in the South Asia Nationals, KIRA Esports, in an early exit in the semi-finals of this tournament. Union Gaming then faced off against Team MercenarieZ handily beating them with a score of 3-0, in a best of 5. The Grand Finale consisted of three maps Theme Park, Club House, and Oregon, with Union Gaming putting up scores of 7-5 on each map. 

In the semi-finals, Union Gaming beat KIRA Esports on maps such as Kafe and Club House with score lines of 7-3 for both maps. MonkaS were convincingly beaten in the other semi-finals by Team MercenarieZ on Villa and Theme Park with score lines of 7-3 and 7-0 respectively, setting up the Finals between Team MercenarieZ and Union Gaming. In the playoff stages, Thatcher was banned in all maps, but Team Union Gaming had used their practice time well pulling off some interesting tricks with their operators, most notably with Kapkan who is a trap operator on Theme Park. The win for Team Union Gaming nets them 275 Six Invitational (SI) points and also provides them with winnings of USD 7500. History was made, as this is the first time a team has been able to dominate all phases of the playoff stage and is a great achievement for Team Union Gaming.

Team Union Gaming consists of two Bangladeshi, and three Indian players, led by a Bangladeshi Tasabbir “Sparko” Hashem. The other members of the team include Naveen “Beat” Krishnan (India), Arvinth “Jittery” Narayanan (India), Sudwipto “Poseidon” Kumar (Bangladesh), and Nitin “EX7.” Tom (India). The South Asia Regional of the Six Major is the latest addition to the Global Circuit and holds the smallest prize pool and the lowest SI points, however, with growing interest and player base in South Asia, more teams based in the region could be seen represented at the Pro-League or the Six Invitational. If teams such as Team Union Gaming go on to show dominance not just over their South Asian rivals but across the global circuit, South Asia could be seen as a force to be reckoned with in the future and could see an increase in the prize pool and SI points awarded for the Six Invitational. This would open the doorway for South Asia based teams to participate in the Global tournaments and compete for the Six Invitational.

With the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic the tournament was adjusted to a different format than previous years, with Asia being divided into three divisions Oceania, North Asia, and South Asia. Rainbow Six Siege is an online tactical shooter developed by Ubisoft, Montreal and published by Ubisoft.

• PUBG has taken the South Asian Esports scene by storm
• Over 2,000 Esports athletes play PUBG Mobile tournaments in Sri Lanka
• Google Search Trends show that PUBG has overtaken Rugby in number of searches
• Higher search trends on “PUBG” in the Nothern and Eastern provinces
• Gamer.LK hosted Sri Lanka’s largest PUBG Mobile tournament in 2020 which gained mainstream interest

PUBG, the OG battle royale game released on PC and mobile has taken the South Asian Esports scene by storm. At present Sri Lanka already has over 2000 Esports athletes who play in PUBG Mobile tournaments across the country. Sri Lankan Esports overall is rising at an impressive rate since the increase of tournaments and events organized by Gamer.LK.

We decided to compare the search trends and scope of Rugby and the most played Esport in Sri Lanka in recent years, PUBG. And the results were interesting! According to Google Trends, in the past 20 months, Sri Lankans have proved to have shown an interest in PUBG more than towards Rugby. The exception being for the period September 14th – Nov 16th, where there’s a peak of searches on the Rugby World Cup and a gradual decline going back to being lesser than the PUBG searches. While categorizing the search trends according to the subregions of the country, it is clear that, out of the 9 provinces of Sri Lanka, all other provinces other than Western and Central Province have been engaging in PUBG searches more than Rugby and the highest searches belong to Northern and Eastern province where the percentage of PUBG searches did hit 83% in each province, well now that’s massive!

In February 2020, Gamer.LK  hosted Sri Lankan’s Largest PUBG Mobile Tournament with over 1400+  Esports athletes participating from across the country, which was streamed over Sri Lanka’s first Esports web TV channel GLKtv for PUBG fans, and other Esports enthusiasts. It gained mainstream interest as well from television broadcasts.

Taking the above facts into consideration, it is clearly visible that among Sri Lankan youth society, interest towards PUBG is continuing to surpass that of Rugby except for during the “Rugby season”, where all the madness is about Rugby. This also indicates that Esports already has begun to surpass traditional sports, and soon will be the most-watched, and played sport in the country.