London, UK: The UK and Ireland’s longest standing esports tournament, the ESL Premiership, is proud to announce the renewal of Intel’s support as headline sponsor for the 2021 Year of competition. Along with the addition of the Premiership’s first mobile title, League of Legends: Wild Rift, VALORANT will be joining the roster of titles for this season.
Being operated under the ESL Premiership banner, the VALORANT UK&I Skirmish – Powered by Intel, will see the first instance of organised VALORANT play for the local office. This one-off tournament will include open qualifiers and an eight-team round robin group stage, which will see two groups compete to qualify for position in the playoffs. On Saturday 26th June, qualified teams will begin their bracket run to be crowned champions and lay claim to the £10,000 prize pool.
Throughout the Premiership and VALORANT UK&I Skirmish, the Intel #PREMVP will highlight exceptional play for individual players. We’ll also get a peak behind the curtain to listen in to players during their matches with the Intel Team Comms.
“It’s been exciting to see the tremendous growth of the Valorant community over the past 12 months. We’re delighted to support its inclusion in the ESL Premiership alongside League of Legends: Wild Rift, with both games promising to make this an impressive season for fans and competitors. Through organizations like ESL, Intel remains committed to supporting esports at both grassroots and professional levels.” – Mark Walton, EMEA Graphics and Gaming Comms Manager
ESL are currently celebrating their 20th Year of Esports, which caps off a long history of creating compelling experiences. Through Intel’s tenure as the longest running sponsor of the ESL Premiership, they continue to demonstrate their dedication to growing domestic competition.
“Intel continues to be an instrumental partner of the Premiership. They have been critical in allowing us to bring these brand new titles and communities together. I cannot wait for the Skirmish to kick off next month.” – Dan Ellis, Partnerships Director, ESL UK
Open qualifiers take place on Monday 31st May and Tuesday 2nd June, signups are live right now at esl.im/VALORANTQual1 and esl.im/VALORANTQual2. To stay up to date with all the ESL Premiership news, follow @ESLUK on twitter, and be sure not to miss a moment of the action when the VALORANT UK&I Skirmish broadcast kicks off on Monday 7th June on the ESLValorant twitch channel.
About Intel
Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) is an industry leader, creating world-changing technology that enables global progress and enriches lives. Inspired by Moore’s Law, we continuously work to advance the design and manufacturing of semiconductors to help address our customers’ greatest challenges. By embedding intelligence in the cloud, network, edge and every kind of computing device, we unleash the potential of data to transform business and society for the better. To learn more about Intel’s innovations, go to newsroom.intel.com and intel.com.
© Intel Corporation. Intel, the Intel logo and other Intel marks are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
About VALORANT
VALORANT is a competitive 5v5 character-based tactical shooter for the PC developed by Riot Games. VALORANT is a precise and lethal multiplayer game with high-fidelity gunplay, a diverse arsenal of guns, agents with unique abilities, and competitively tuned maps for thousands of hours of play.
VALORANT is a free-to-play game and optimized to perform on a wide variety of PC hardware, allowing for a global audience to compete. Demonstrated by the game’s best-in-class game server quality, global infrastructure, and proprietary anti-cheat technology, Riot Games is committed to preserving the core tenets of the tactical shooter genre and upholding the competitive integrity of the gameplay experience.
About ESL Gaming
ESL Gaming is the world’s largest esports and gaming lifestyle company. Since 1994, the company has been shaping the industry and leading esports and gaming innovation on a global scale across the most popular video games with numerous online and offline esports competitions, and through premier gaming lifestyle festivals. The company operates high-profile, branded international leagues and tournaments under the ESL Pro Tour,
including ESL One, Intel® Extreme Masters, DreamHack Masters, ESL Pro League, and other preeminent, stadium-size tournaments. ESL Gaming also produces and hosts DreamHack Open tournaments, ESL National Championships, grassroots amateur cups, matchmaking systems, and DreamHack’s gaming lifestyle festivals — which feature everything gaming under one roof. ESL Gaming is part of MTG, the leading international digital entertainment group. More information is available at eslfaceitgroup.com.