Chinese company Tencent will invest 13 billion euros in e-sports over the next five years

Chinese internet giant Tencent has unveiled a plan that shows that the company will invest more than 13 billion euros in the e-sports market in China over the next five years. Tencent wants to set up various competitions, tournaments and organizations.

In addition, Tencent wants to invest part of the money in guiding talented players and establishing various amusement parks with e-sports or one of the popular e-sports games as the theme. Tencent expects the e-sports sector in China to become the largest in the world.

Tencent already announced in May that it will build a special game city in the Chinese city of Wuhu. Not only should there be an e-sports amusement park, but also an e-sports university, a tech entrepreneurial community and a data center.

With the investment of more than 13 billion euros, Tencent probably wants to counterbalance its competitor Alibaba, which also has big plans in the Chinese e-sports sector with its subsidiary Alisports. For example, Alisports works together with the Olympic Council of Asia. In April it became clear that e-sports will become part of the Asian variant of the Olympic Games, the Asian Games. In 2018 and 2022, e-sports will be included in the program.

Alisports also entered into a partnership with the International e-Sports Federation in 2016 and in the coming years it will invest approximately 140 million euros in the e-sports sector. The company also wants to build special e-sports stadiums.

Tencent owns Riot Games, creator of League of Legends, one of the largest esports games. Tencent also owns a minority stake in Activision Blizzard and a majority stake in Finnish mobile game developer Supercell. In November 2015, Tencent released its own clone of League of Legends, the mobile game King of Glory.