Hyderabad, first city to unveil its franchise team in Esports Premier League

New Delhi: Esports Premier League (ESPL) has announced Hyderabad as the first city to unveil its franchise-based league team in the inaugural edition, which started on Wednesday. The team from The city of pearls has been named Hyderabad Hydras. ESPL has also roped in popular Bollywood actor Tiger Shroff to power the league and to take the Esports fervor into the mainstream.

The revolutionary ESPL and the country's first-ever franchise-based team Hyderabad Hydras—aims to cultivate Esports enthusiasts across Andhra Pradesh and Telangana through a concrete roadmap of events.

Starting with the nationwide mega tournament with lakhs of registrations in the highly competitive Season 1 of ESPL. Here, ESPL will filter out the top 88 teams from the open tournament and invite the top 8 professional Free Fire Esports teams to the mix. This mixture of 96 teams will compete for the final 8 teams that will progress to the final stage and represent eight cities/state teams from across the country.

Chequered Flag Sports, a consortium between Sirish Kumar, Prasad Mangipudi, and Aashwij Ravula will be the owners of Hyderabad Hydras and the only team to be bought in Season 1.

Besides Hyderabad Hydras, teams will be represented by cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, and states of Punjab, and Rajasthan from the next season of the league. India Today Gaming has teamed up with Garena to create this exclusive gaming platform featuring their most popular battle royale game, Free Fire, in India.

Prasad Mangipudi, Director of Hyderabad Hydras, who is also the moving force behind the Premier Badminton League—one of the most Sought-after badminton league currently in the world, said, "Esports is a huge emerging opportunity and with world's largest youth population, Esports ecosystem is going to explode in the next decade.

Like every other industry, Esports will also see a lot of corporates driving this growth and Chequered Flag Sports will play its role in professionalizing and as a first mover in the Esports industry."

The matches will be streamed on OTT giant Disney+ Hotstar alongside official YouTube and Facebook channels of India Today and Aaj Tak and its websites. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Season 1 will be held virtually over two and a half months.

It will also feature a prize pool worth Rs. 25 lakh where the winner takes home a sum of Rs. 12 lakh while second and third-placed teams will take home Rs. 6 lakh and Rs. 3 lakh, respectively.