Guild Esports wins fifth major trophy

Guild Esports (GILD) has won its fifth major trophy after its Fortnite pro-player, Henrik Mclean, achieved first place in the prestigious Fortnite Champion Series (‘FNCS’) EU Final on Sunday.

Guild Esports, which is co-owned by David Beckham and is the first esport organisation to list on London’s stock exchange, said Henrick Mclean, who is otherwise known as ‘Hen’, had won the final of the champion series to take home half of the tournament’s $300,000 top prize.

In addition, Guild’s Jannis Matwin (‘JannisZ’), Lennard Sill (“Rezon ay”) and Anas El-Abd (‘Anas’) rounded off the showing by Guild, finishing in 4th, 7th and 8th place, respectively.

The victory has cemented Guild as having the number 1 ranking spot in Europe and earned Guild’s pro-players a total of $260,000 in prize money from the event, it told investors today.

Commenting on the news, Kal Hourd, Chief Executive Officer of Guild Esports, said: “We are incredibly proud to have the top Fortnite roster in Europe. Winning trophies and generating media value is exactly what our brand partners expect. We are building this business the right way and I remain confident in securing significant partnership revenue in 2022.”

Guild Esport’s investors include London-listed Blue Star Capital. To date, the investment company, which is focused on investing in new technologies, has invested around £0.706 million in Guild Esports, and holds around a 5.95% of the issued share capital of Guild.  

Guild started trading on the London Stock Exchange in October 2020 to take advantage of the growing esports markets, a market which   Blue Star says is experiencing significant growth.

In 2020 it was estimated at around 495m viewers and is projected to reach around 646 million viewers by 2023.   This is expected to result in revenues growing from $950m to $1.60bn.