The football of Fifa and Pes, that of video games, is the most likely thing to the concept of electronic competitive sports for those who have never picked up a Joypad or Joystick. In Italy, the best-selling video game coincides with the most popular sport. We are binary in tastes. That is why there is particular interest around the European football leagues. The qualifications started a week ago, tomorrow the Italian national team TIMVISION PES takes the field, which is reigning champion and dreams of repeating the European success after the 2020 triumph. The national team won the UEFA eEuro 2020 by beating Serbia 3- 1 in the final in the best of five games, in a championship played exclusively at Pes 20 on Playstation 4. But there is not only the national team, starting from March the eSerie A Tim, organized by Lega Serie A, Infront and PG Esports, a Playstation tournament developed on two different platforms, Fifa and Pro Evolution Soccer.
Why is football a minor eSport?
But football is paradoxically a minor eSport. The bulk of this billion-dollar business travels almost entirely on PCs and smartphones and focuses on video games like Dota2, Legue of Legends or “dinosaur” shooters like Counter Strike. Indecipherable matches in the fruition for an audience of non-experts. Dota2 for example is a MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) most played and most followed by the community of eSports fans with 122 million players. If you do not know the mechanics of the game perfectly it is, let’s say, complicated to follow a commentary on this “discipline”. The situation is different for football, more accessible even if the public is much more limited. And the prospects seem interesting: ProGaming, which is also an export partner of the FIGC and organizes the selection of the national representative who will participate in UEFA Eeuro2021, is among the Italian companies included in the prestigious “FT 1000 Europe’s Fastest Growing Companies” ranking.
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What do you need to practice?
To practice at an amateur level you clearly need to have a Playstation console, Xbox but also the Nintendo Switch and a football game (or Fifa or Pes). If, on the other hand, you want to level up, you need to become a Youtuber, Twitcher in short, a streamer who is a player who broadcasts his own game. To start you need the console (or the PC, depending on the type of game), headphones, microphone and cameras. Let’s start with the last accessory: for 129 euros the Logitech StreamCam is better but with 50 euros there are cameras without infamy and without praise. On the microphone there is the Samson Meteor which is the most popular on Twitch, the queen platform for gamers (and not only) and has two advantages: the first is that it does not cost much (85 euros) and then greatly ennobles those who use it. . In the sense that it is also beautiful to see. Having said that you don’t need to play, just the one integrated in the headphones advances. There would also be the gamer chair, which are the padded ones, a little bit like a spaceship. They are very comfortable but are only useful if you are a cyber athlete or an aspiring one. Secretlab Omega 2020 edition which is one of the most requested costs over 350 euros. You can also live without it. While more strategic is the choice of software to manage the game live. Consoles have their own streaming service. PlayStation, for example, allows direct streaming on Twitch (as well as Youtube), but by doing so you will have no direct control over the broadcast.
On PC, the two main platforms are better Obs and Streamyard. Twitch (which also has a practical internal streaming school) also recommends other services but for simplicity we would like to recommend Open Broadcast Software also because its basic version, i.e. free, is the most complete. Streamyard is simpler but if you want to customize the experience you need a premium account.