ESL, the world’s largest esports company, kicked off the Mortal Kombat X Worldwide Competitive program with the incredibly successful Fatal 8 invitational, presented by Xbox. The four hour event totaled over 200,000 hours watched and a peak concurrent viewership (CCU) of 85,449 as ESL, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and NetherRealm Studios concluded their search for Mortal Kombat X’s first champion.
The ESL Burbank studios were at maximum capacity as the fighting game community rallied around the newly released game’s esports success. Official viewing parties in London and Paris also thrived as the fighting game experts fought to prove themselves in the newly-released game. The weekend saw #Fatal8 trending on Twitter in the United States as social media exploded with support for the game and tournament: over 2.2 million social media impressions were made with more than one million people reached over Facebook.
“The fighting game community is one that we were eager to welcome into the ESL ecosystem. But we knew we had to do it right,” said Joshua Gray, Creative Producer at ESL and Fatal 8 host. “A lot of time went into perfecting the event’s build up – from the personalized invitations to the trailers that really did tease. We put ourselves under a lot of pressure, having built up so many expectations. All of us here at ESL are extremely happy with how the event went, and with the reaction from the community. Fatal 8 was just the beginning: our ESL Pro League for Mortal Kombat X kicks off May 3rd across our three regions and promises to be spectacular.”
The Mortal Kombat X Worldwide Competitive Program continues May 3rd with the ESL Pro League for Xbox One, which hosts weekly US$1,000 tournaments in North America and Europe, nad US$1,000 PC competition in the CIS territories. After a season of open cups, showdowns, and tournaments, the winning players secure a spot in the Pro League Global Season Finals. Set to take place on July 11th in the ESL Burbank studios, the Global Season Finals will pay out at least US$50,000 in prize money to the kombatants.
More information available tournament’s official website or ESL.
Our complete review of Mortal Kombat X can be found here.
