This cultural heavyweight Fortnite is helping to move the whole esports industry forward!
The first-ever Fortnite world cup has come to an exhilarating end after the 16-year-old American Bugha, real name Kyle Giersdorf, won the solo final pocketing himself a tidy three million US dollars. With over 2.3 million concurrent viewers on Twitch and Youtube, this set the World cup as the highest watched competitive gaming event (excluding China) of all time.
Over the three days, the world cup was hosted at the Arthur Ashe stadium in New York. Four events were held where Creative, Celebrity/Pro, Duos and Solo’s were crowned world champions. The Journey began in early April as over ten weeks of qualifiers attracted over ten million players and over 200 hundred countries were represented to participate and attempt to earn their spot in the World Cup.
The first day started with the Creative finals, where eight teams of four would face-off and battle for the 1.3 million dollar prize. This was one of the two events that Ninja would feature, but neither of those surprisingly being the Duo or Solo finals as he didn’t qualify for either. The eventual winners were team Fish Fam, led by captain Faze Cizzorz. The day continued onto the celebrity/pro match which paired a pro Fortnite player with a celebrity with a prize pool of three million dollars for charities of the duo’s choices. Some of the celebrities that participated were Marshmello, perhaps the most well known in the lineup, being paired up with none other than Ninja himself. Xavier Woods, pro wrestler and an avid gamer, was paired up with Denkops as well as the English DJ Sigala being paired up with Drlupo. The eventual winners of the match were RL Grime and Airwaks, becoming back to back celebrity/pro champions, who took one million dollars to share between their chosen charities.
On Saturday came along the Duo’s final in which pairs of players would participate to win the top prize of, you guessed it, three million dollars. Yet coming in the top four guaranteed you to become an instant millionaire, with the fourth-best team nabbing one and a half million. With five individuals representing Great Britain and eleven in the overall world cup, the opportunity to make a name for yourself on the Fortnite scene was only a few kills away. The format for both finals would follow the idea that 6 games would be played and a ranking table with points will decide the winner of all 6 games. The winner of a victory royal would gain 10 points for the table, 2nd to 5th would gather 7 points, 6th to 10th 5 points and 11th to 15th 3 points. Each elimination would also count as 1 point on the table.
The winners of the Duos were none other than Nyhrox and aqua coming from Denmark and Austria respectively after back to back victory royales allowed them to pip ahead into first with just 4 points separating them from second. But the ultimate shout goes to the three Great British players that were in the top ten Duos. Item teamed up with the German Derox who came in eighth overall, with Mongraal and Dutch teammate Mitr0 coming in sixth. Yet 15-year-old Wolfiez, real name Jaden Ashman, with again another Dutch player called Rojo topped the table for British players coming in second place. Together they took home a cool $2.25 million.
The highlight of the event came on the final day of the world cup as the solo’s final took place with six games to decide the first and true world champion of solo’s for Fortnite. Huge names were taking part in the event with Tfue, Benjyfishy, Bizzle and so many more in the ranks. Each game accommodated a different victor with Bugha winning the first match with a clean 9 kills. But consistent games from Bugha as well as racking up the kills, bar one game where he was finished off early, allowed the 16-year-old to win the solo’s final a full 26 points ahead of second place. 14-year-old Mongraal, real name Kyle Jackson, came in again with a reputable 13th place in the solo’s giving him a tidy paycheck of $375,000 for the two days of work.
The overall event broke records in every way showing the growth of the E-sport scene. E-sports is expected to become a billion-dollar industry in 2019 and with the popularity of the Fortnite world cup, there is no surprise there. The overall prize pool was estimated to be 30 million dollars which is the highest amount for an E-sports event in history, yet a very short-lived record as the Dota 2 International prize pool is already at 31 million dollars with another 25 days of contributing left. So with a standout event with unforgettable memories, we can only expect bigger and better things to come from Fortnite and E-sports in the future.
Handcrafted by Marcus Brown, find him on Twitter at: @MarcusJBrown98
