Our aim is to ensure a gamer with skill will be recognized and identified to represent India across international tournaments: Yash Pariani, CEO, Indian Gaming League (IGL)

Q5. How has the viewership and community engagement grown towards IGL’s live tournaments? Especially when compared to the org’s heydays.

Yash: Initially, during our first week that we had launched, we had to postpone a few tournaments due to a low turnout. Today, we have a different problem on how to accommodate even more players in a single event.

For that, we’ve created a platform on our website and can host around a couple thousand in a single tournament.

Q6. The COVID-19 pandemic did indeed do a number on offline tournament hosts. However, it also saw a rise in people taking up video games to kill time. This, in turn, increased viewership in esports tournaments as a lot more people were engaged and invested in these titles. How did the pandemic affect IGL tournaments in terms of both viewership and player participation?

Yash: The pandemic certainly gave a considerable boost to esports in general. It advanced interest, and users were able to game without any restrictions as that was the best way casual gamers would pass the time.

We saw a 300% increase for three months in a row when it came to our streaming numbers. That did slow down once the unlock happened, but we had built an established community by then that would still come back to watch our matches.

Player participation also increased to the point where, before the pandemic, we were hosting 4-5 tournaments daily. Today we’re hosting close to 15 events daily and aim to host 20 tournaments per day in the coming quarter.

Q7. What is your opinion on company expansion? Can fans expect the Indian Gaming League to widen its horizons in the coming days?

Yash: We have a lot of exciting things planned in the coming quarter. We’ll be launching our Championship Season 1 Cup as well as the Inaugural IGL Annual Esports Awards hosted by some extremely well-known people, along with all our regular IPs and daily scrims.

Q8. How far do you see the Indian esports scene growing in the coming months on both the mobile and PC platforms?

Yash: Esports is still in its nascency. This decade will be the one where it surges and remains, and with the rollout of 5G soon, expect an even higher number of gamers to appear. Multiplayer games will have almost zero latency, which will kick start a whole new segment of games for people unable to play before.