Wargaming plans $10m eSports investment in 2014

Wargaming has pledged to invest $10m into World of Tanks’ eSports presence this year, creating a dedicated team to head up that portion of the business.

Games Industry reports from Wargaming CEO Victor Kisyli’s press conference in Warsaw, Poland.

Kisyli explained that the competive online title has seen a huge upswing of interest for eSports over the last two years. In 2012, 30,000 professional players participated in 120 World of Tanks tournaments – that turned into 200,000 players in over 1,000 tournaments last year.

This has prompted the company to create an internal team dedicated to developing the game’s involvement in the burgeoning scene.

"With our eSports team we founded a company within the company," Kisyli said. "They take care not only about game features to cater to spectators, but also about the physical organisation of the tournaments.”

"In the beginning, it was not so much us who wanted to introduce World of Tanks to eSports, it was the players themselves who wanted to be more competitive."

Kisyli went on to confirm that World of Tanks has now reached 80m players worldwide.