Car 54, Where Are You?

Some personal stuff, along a dose of some of the latest esports and gaming news.

Sep 16, 2024

*Scene from the classic sitcom, Car 54, Where Are You?* Credit: IMDB

I don’t want to bore you with personal stuff, but it’s been a challenging week as I sort out preconditions to have a surgery at the end of the month to remove a polyp on my voice box. Anyone that has had the misfortune of talking to me in 2024 can attest that my voice sounds horrible, and this is the reason why.

I am truly in the home stretch for the surgery following a CT Scan on Saturday to make sure my heart isn’t going to explode or something if they put me under anesthesia. With that out of the way, hopefully I can get this stuff behind me, recover after a month and get things back to normal.

And maybe you don’t care about these things, but it’s obvious there has been an infrequency with this newsletter as of late, and all of these things have played a part in that.

There’s nothing I love more than this and my work at The Esports Advocate, so I am really looking forward to getting back on track.

Thanks for listening, and look out for some exciting stories this week! - James Fudge.

Rocket League Championship Series in 2025

The 2024 Rocket League Championship Series (RLCS) Grand Finals took place this weekend at the Dickies Arena, in Fort Worth, Texas, with Team BDS ultimately triumphing over G2 Esports and being crowned the 2024 world champions. With the Rocket League esports season officially over for 2024, Epic Games announced first details on its plans for Rocket League competitive in 2025.

“These changes are aimed at increasing opportunities for fans, players and teams to be able to compete and watch more RLCS,” the league noted in a social media post.

First and foremost, RLCS in 2025 will have an overall prize pool of $5M USD for the entire season and introduce a new 1v1 Series taking place in all regions alongside its 3v3 series. The league also revealed that the RLCS World Championship in 2025 (taking place at Dickies Arena, in Fort Worth, Texas) will be expanding to 20 teams. The new season kicks off in January, and will be operated by BLAST.

More details on the new formats and other changes can be found in this social media thread.

LEGO Fortnite: Lost Isle Launches Tuesday

Speaking of Epic Games, new content for LEGO Fornite will drop on Tuesday called LEGO Fortnite: Lost Isles, which adds a large amount of content to the game within Epic’s popular Fortnite universe/platform.

The new content update will bring Fortnite’s beloved Klombo to life, addition to introducing five different environments to explore (beach, plains, jungle, mountains and floating islands), new tools (Pirate Musket, Flint-Knock Pistol, Throwing Spears and more), new crafting recipes, new quests, decor, and more. Check out the official Fortnite blog for an exhaustive list of all the new content being introduced in Lost Isles.

The International 2024 Viewership

Esports Charts released its viewership report on T13, noting that the 2024 edition of Valve’s Dota 2 world championship event—which saw Team Liquid beat out Gaimin Gladiators to hoist the aegis this year—drew over 1.5M concurrent viewers during the grand finals.

Other interesting statistics from T13, according to Esports Charts:

Over 55.1M hours watched.
Average viewership across streams was 469.6K, with a peak audience reaching 1.52M.
Team Liquid and Gaimin Gladiators Grand Finals saw peak concurrent viewership of 1.52M.
English, Russian, and Spanish accounted for approximately 86% of the total hours watched.
Tagalog (Philippines) broadcasts set a new record for peak viewership at 77.2K peak viewers.
Thai-language broadcasts reached 40.8K peak viewers.
Thai, Tagalog, Indonesian, and Vietnamese languages saw increases this year.
English, Russian, Spanish, and Portuguese experienced a decline in audience.
Kick generated approximately 1M hours watched, 6X more than last year - attributed to casters such as Benjaz, Kuku, Armel, Gabbi, and others.

It should be noted that these figures do not include viewership numbers from China. For more details and a deeper drilldown, check out the Esports Charts T113 Recap.

🚌 People on the Move 🚌

Jack Curtis launches a new agency called Reticle.
Jill Slor joins abstraction as its new senior animator.
Nikolay Nedelchev starts a new position as senior feed trader live at GR8 Tech.
Chris Creegan named director of gaming & esports at Burson.
Jason Baker appointed to director of event technology at Encore.
Amanda Rubin joins Wildfire as its chief revenue officer.
Jon Hughes leaves Epic Games to focus on FCHQ.
Sergey Orlov appointed VP of marketing automation at Appodeal.
Isabela McLenachen joins Disney as a lead engineer for Disney streaming.
Ken Wee joins Mattel as EVP and chief strategy officer.
Rodolfo Delgado joins NZXT to lead influencer strategy as part of the global marketing team.
Cloud9 VP of Sales Tim Mulligan teams with New York University for "Advanced Seminar in Sports Management."

🌎 News From Around the World 🌎

🙏🏼 RIP, professional Rocket League pro Millie ‘Duckz’ Ward.

🐤Flappy Bird returns, but not with the original developer.

😲 Pakistan government claims militants used PUBG to plan an attack.

✅ Valve: anti-cheat measures are coming soon to Deadlock.

🛑 WoW players seek end to toxicity in the War Within.

👋🏼 TenZ and Sacy exit the professional Valorant scene.

🤖VSPO CEO: half of its esports tournaments are assisted by AI.

💰 HyperX Arena and Allied Esports donate to UNLV's first esports lounge.

💰Nazara subsidiary Nazara Dubai FZ acquired a 15.86% stake in STAN.

💰Nytro Lab secured $8M in a funding round.

🤝🏼 EStars joins forces with Ecobank Nigeria for esports education.

🤝🏼 Beter extends GRID partnership.

🤝🏼 Gen.G Academy partners with stc play.

The Fudge Retort

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