FC Barcelona player Piqué says he is working on a major e-sports project
Gerard Piqué, a defender for FC Barcelona football club, announced during an interview on a morning show on the popular Catalan radio station Rac1 that he is working on a major e-sports project.
The footballer has not disclosed further details about the project. Pique did indicate that he is coming up with something new. It is still unclear whether it is an e-sports project around the football game FIFA 17 or whether it will be a broader project. Whether that means that he will start a new e-sports team himself, or that he will buy an existing e-sports team and then shape it himself, is unclear. It is also unclear whether Piqué is shaping his esports project in his own name or whether his club Barcelona is also involved.
During the interview, Piqué admitted that he had never heard of esports until six months ago. He says he quickly became fascinated and wants to be actively involved in it. That reports DotEsports. However, Pique is no stranger to the gaming industry. In 2015, he founded the game studio Kerad Games, which employs about thirty programmers. For example, the football manager game Golden Manager for iOS and Android comes from this studio.
Piqué is not the first big name in the sports world to invest in e-sports. A week ago, FC Barcelona striker Neymar announced that he wanted to invest in a League of Legends e-sports team. At the beginning of this year, the Brazilian former top football player Ronaldo, together with a professional poker player friend and a director from the poker world, bought fifty percent of the shares of the Brazilian e-sports organization CNB e-Sports Club. CNB is one of the largest esports organizations in South America.
Another former athlete, Canadian former NBA basketball player Rick Fox, founded the North American esports organization Echo Fox in late 2015. He paid approximately $1 million to acquire the Gravity Gaming team, which secured Fox a spot in League of Legends’ North American LCS competition.