Esports Scotland are launching the Scottish Esports League in the country with the aim of growing a grassroots league open to everyone.

The tournament will feature ten games, the first two of which will be announced on a Facebook Live stream this evening (Wednesday, 21st March) with details of how to sign up to participate. The Scottish Esports League will then get underway a week later at the end of the month and will run over 25 weeks and will feature single bracket rounds where players will accumulate points. The winners will then enter into a LAN final in Edinburgh in early October.

The idea of the tournament is to raise awareness about esports in Scotland, where the organisers say there is no professional esports team. The first step is, then, a drive to raise awareness among the grassroots and create a culture around the sport, with the aim of growing the professional level in the future.

Just like any other sport, the key to growth is to get people interested, either in watching or playing. Even in the digital world, where most people consume their knowledge of the world through the veil of the smartphone screen, participation remains the best way to get people interested in watching or following the upper echelons of the sport’s ladder.

With esports becoming more and more popular amongst fans, participants and indeed advertisers and big sporting organisations, there now seems to be a necessary decision as to whether a new league is based around participation – that is, a grassroots league open to any and all players – or whether it’s about tapping into the potential of the elite level – by creating a tournament featuring big teams, for example.

Most football leagues, for example, who are creating their own sim sports versions of their domestic competitions, are aiming to recruit top players to represent the league’s teams. The NHL, on the other hand, is looking to grassroots and participation by getting fans from around the world to compete in regional leagues and, for the winners, global finals.

The different strategies are interesting and certainly one to keep an eye on in the coming months.