The Russian Football Premier League (RFPL) Cyberfootball Cup will be held in Ufa on February 24–26. 16 players will take part in the tournament, each of which represents one of the clubs of the elite division of the national championship.

TASS talks about the features of eSports competitions and the financial side of a professional game of football simulators.

Cyberfootball flagships and their patrons

The most popular and successful lines of football simulations for many years are the FIFA series (from the Canadian company EA Sports) and Pro Evolution Soccer (abbreviated as PES, the developer is the Japanese company Konami). Most of the gaming market belongs to the FIFA series, although the Japanese simulator has its own audience.

​To play cyber football with Gianni Infantino (FIFA president - TASS note)? And what, why not. We have already played real football in the summer

Vitaly Mutko

Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, President of the RFU (December 2016)

The main difference between the two games is the realism of the game model (gameplay) and licenses for tournaments (FIFA owns the rights to most of Europe's leading tournaments, a total of 35 leagues in the version of the game released in 2016. PES, in turn, owns the rights to the largest club European competitions: the Champions League, the Europa League and the UEFA Super Cup; from 2011 to 2016, the main club tournament in South America, the Copa Libertadores, was presented in the game).

The FIFA and PES series are supported by various international football organizations. The EA Sports series is backed by the International Football Federation (FIFA), while the Konami product is backed by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). The prize money for the winner and finalist of the FIFA (Interactive FIFA World Cup 2017) and Pro Evolution Soccer (PES League) tournaments is the same. The champions will receive $200,000, and the losers in the final matches will receive $100,000.

The selection of participants for e-football competitions is carried out according to a system that includes several qualifying stages. For example, 32 players will enter the tournament under the auspices of FIFA (16 on PlayStation 4 consoles, 16 on Xbox). The quotas between the participants are divided as follows: ten winners of the European qualification (five players for each of the two types of consoles), eight - the American one (four participants each), four - the rest of the world (two for PlayStation and Xbox). An additional eight places are awarded to the winners of the FIFA 17 Ultimate Team Online Championship (four players each). One more place for each of the consoles will be played among e-sportsmen who have signed contracts with real clubs (German Wolfsburg, Spanish Valencia, English Manchester City and Portuguese Sporting).

In addition to tournaments under the auspices of FIFA and UEFA, other international e-football competitions are held, such as the Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC). Its total prize fund in 2016 amounted to $15,000, the winner received $8,000, the finalist - $4,000, and the third-place winner - $2,000. The fourth was CSKA cyber player Andrey Guryev, he earned $1,000.

The largest prize money in eSports

The most profitable games for esports players are real-time strategy games and role-playing games Dota 2 (the prize pool of the tournament in 2016 was $20.7 million, the winner received $9.1 million) and League of Legends ($5 million and $2 million, respectively), and also first-person shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive ($1.5M and $800K)

The leadership positions of these games are provided not only by a large audience, but also by the fact that the game has been functioning for many years. It is impossible for sports simulators that come out annually to compete with "long-playing" projects in this indicator.

History of esports in Russia

Russia was the first country to recognize computer sports as an official sport. The corresponding order in July 2001 was signed by the head of the State Committee of the Russian Federation for Physical Culture and Sports Pavel Rozhkov. After the transformation of the structure into the Federal Agency for Physical Culture and Sports, as well as the introduction of the All-Russian Register of Sports, the procedure was repeated in March 2004 by decision of the head of the department, Vyacheslav Fetisov.

In July 2006, this sport was removed from the register, as it did not meet the criteria for inclusion in this list: it was not developed in more than half of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. In addition, there was no specialized all-Russian physical culture and sports association registered in the country. In June 2016, the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation returned the status of an official sport to computer sports.

About RFPL Cyberfootball Cup

The draw ceremony will take place on 24 February. The first stage, in which 16 participants will be divided into two groups of eight players (meetings in the "each-to-each" format), and the quarter-final meetings (starting from this round of a series of matches to two victories of one of the players) will be held on February 25. The semi-finals and the decisive match of the first official e-football tournament in Russian history will be held on February 26.

Any direction that fans are interested in is important for the club. They like it, which means it should interest us as well.<...>The ratings and popularity of esports do not allow us to stand aside. Therefore, we signed contracts with two esportsmen at once

Daria Spivak

Marketing Director of FC Lokomotiv

Game platform - prefix Sony PlayStation 4, a simulator to determine the winner - FIFA 17 produced by EA Sports.

The main goals set for the organizers of the cup are to prepare participants for participation in international tournaments, as well as to expand the fan base of Premier League teams through the audience of computer sports enthusiasts.

The winner of the competition will be awarded a cup and a commemorative medal. In addition, the organizing committee of the event reserves the right to establish cash prizes for participants.

Each of the 16 Premier League clubs is represented at the tournament by one esportsman. At the competitions in Ufa, the teams from the elite of Russian football will be represented by the following players:

Contracts with professional cyberfootball players, in particular, were signed by CSKA, Spartak, Zenit and Ufa, while Rostov, Krasnodar, Ural and Krylya Sovetov held regional qualifying competitions that determined the players who will represent their teams at the RFPL Cup.

Also, the Bashkir e-sportsman admitted that he does not think about whether his "native walls" will help him. "What will actually happen, we will know only in the days of the tournament," he summed up.

About the RFPL open e-football championship

At the end of January (PlayStation 4) and the beginning of February (Xbox One), qualifying competitions for participation in the national open championship for FIFA 17 took place. Two players from each qualifying stage advanced to the final part of the tournament. At the decisive stage, they will play with representatives of the clubs of the Russian Premier League. The final of the national e-football championship will be held in Kazan in early March (date and place not yet determined). The winner of the championship, in addition to the title, will receive the right to play in the European qualifying competitions of the interactive world championship under the auspices of the International Football Federation (FIFA).

The decisive matches of the world e-football championship will be held in London. Their winner will receive an invitation to the FIFA Awards, including the best player of 2017.

Andrey Mikhailov

Compared to real football, virtual football in our country is quite competitive, we even have our own world champions, and Russia was the first to come up with the idea of ​​organizing an eSports federation. At the end of 2016, six clubs of the Spanish Examples decided to create a championship, we went further (the initiator was Ufa, where the role of Azamat Muratov, the head of the Bashkir branch of the Federation of Computer Russia, is important). The first sign was the RFPL Cup, where each team was represented by one e-sportsman. The question arose, where to get them?

The pioneer in this case was the same Ufa, which signed a contract last summer with the 2015 FIFA world champion Robert Fakhretdinov. The next step was taken by Spartak, who attracted Sergey Nikiforov, known under the pseudonym Kefir, to his ranks. The red-and-whites bet not only on sporting success, but also on the media, which allowed them to attract new fans. If someone is not in the know, then Sergey is a famous blogger, and the main team even takes him to the training camp. The rest of the clubs went two ways.

The first is the signing of contracts with cyberfootball players whose names are already known to the public. This is exactly what they did in CSKA (Andrey Guryev), Krasnodar (Andrey Konnov), Zenit (Ruslan Yaminov). The second way is holding qualifying tournaments by the clubs. They were used by Terek, Amkar, Anji, Ural and other teams. The second option is the most controversial, since the strongest does not always win.

The Premier League has finally decided that esports is a sport. Here is the argument of RFPL Executive Director Sergey Cheban: “If it’s competitiveness, if it’s passion, if one, two, three, several participate. ".

The status of the event is evidenced by the fact that one of the commentators was Kirill Nabutov, and Gennady Sergeevich Orlov was the guest of honor. During the match between Ufa and Zenit, he enthusiastically applauded Robert Fakhretdinov, who scored one of the goals, before that assisting his player who scored with his heel. Here is what the master of sports journalism thinks about the tournament: “It seems that there are no losers. Ufa won (spoiler) the Champions League place, so everyone should be happy. The guys have a head, that is, they teach football correctly. This is real football propaganda - tactics , technique, as Sergei Bogdanovich told me, it was his dream team, so that the players were so technical and tactically literate. Cyberfootball in Russia live!"

First, a draw took place, which divided the e-football players into two groups. They had to play 7 matches, then quarter-finals (the 4 best teams from each group got into them), semi-finals and final series up to two victories. All virtual players had a fixed rating (85), so, for example, the advantage of Zenit over Tom could not be overwhelming.

In Group A, Anton Klenov, representing Lokomotiv, showed the best result in the group stage. The two-time champion of the country "Kefir", which was always dragged by a dozen schoolchildren, took second place, the players of "Amkar" and "Orenburg", respectively, took the third and fourth positions.

But in group "B", which was noticeably stronger in terms of composition, everything was many times more interesting. Its winner was Andrei Konnov from Krasnodar, who has 4 wins and 3 draws. Like the real Krasnodar, the virtual one was marked by a bright game. What is worth the victory over Zenit (4:3) and a draw with CSKA (4:4). The second place with exactly the same number of points was taken by the favorite of the Ufa public, Robert Fakhretdinov, who suffered two defeats (against Rubin and Krasnodar). The third place belongs to CSKA, the fourth - to Zenit. An interesting fact about Anton Zhukov from Kazan is that in 2015 he was disqualified for a fixed game.

The quarter-finals were not without sensations: Konnov from Krasnodar, who had not yielded before, was knocked out by the representative of Orenburg, Kirill Ordinartsev, in three matches. Left the tournament at this stage and "Kefir" - his "Spartak" was beaten by CSKA. Moreover, the score of the first match was 0:4. The other semi-finalists were Loko and Ufa players. In the semi-finals, Robert beat Kirill in the class, and in another pair, it took all three matches to determine the winner - the e-footballer from CSKA turned out to be more successful.

In the final, he continued his victorious pace, defeating the representative of Ufa, for whom the whole hall was rooting (both matches ended with a score of 3:2). It remains to be hoped that Andrey Guryev will not take cyber-fourth place in the Cyber ​​Champions League. The last match was watched by the players of the Ufa football club, led by Sergey Semak, who shared his impressions of what he saw: “Thank you guys for a very interesting game, they kept us in suspense, our players enjoyed the excellent content and quality of the game, we take note for ourselves what we need to improve in. It would be possible to attract some guys as analysts. "

The winner himself comments on his success in the following way: “All the matches were quite difficult, I went through the group very difficult. I won the derby, I can highlight this, the main match with Spartak, I remember it the most. Spartak would be unforgivable."

Separately, it is worth mentioning the interest of the audience. By the end of the first day, the number of views stopped at about 3 million people, of which more than 700 thousand were on the VKontakte social network. And the broadcast on Twitch entered the top 10 broadcasts of all games that took place on that day, which was a historic achievement for Russian e-football and FIFA 17.

(RFS) and the Federation of Computer Sports (FCS) of Russia announced the first national e-football championship. Following England, France and other leading European football powers, Russia will host the official national championship.

What is cyber football?

By analogy with the official name, it is called "interactive football" - in fact, this is a tournament for the FIFA 2018 computer game from Electronic Arts. Back in April of this year, the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation recognized e-sports as a direction developed at the national level, and already in June it designated e-football as a separate discipline - albeit within the framework of football, and not e-sports. That is why both the RFU and the FCS of Russia are jointly responsible for holding official competitions.

What format?

The main charm of the tournament is that anyone can take part in the qualifying games, and in the final part of the winners will be waiting for the representatives of the clubs of the Russian Football Premier League - there the level of participants will already be very high. At the qualifying stage, 48 vouchers will be played: 21 people will be selected based on the results of a series of online tournaments, another 27 will receive the right to play at the Russian Championship based on the results of offline qualifiers (the organizers call them Grand Prix), which are timed to coincide with the matches of the national team and key games of the RFPL , but take place directly at the stadiums. Another 16 people representing Premier League clubs will join the winners, and already in the final round 64 participants will determine the champion of Russia among themselves.

What results did Russia have in e-football before?

About the same as the national team. In none of the 14 world championships held under the auspices of FIFA, the Russians did not reach the final, although whoever won it - both the United States and Saudi Arabia. At the same time, our players have always been among the strongest and periodically gave high results. For example, in 2006, a person with a symbolic name for Russian football - Viktor "alexx" Gusev - took third place at the World Cyber ​​Games, which in those years was almost the main esports tournament in the world.

Where is e-football taken seriously besides Russia?

Practically in all countries of Europe. The main wave began in 2016, when several leading organizations at once - the English Premier League, the French Ligue 1, and the Dutch Eredivisie - announced the start of e-football championships. The trend quickly swept across Europe, and individual teams signed not one, but several players at once to their squads, for example, the same Roma.

The championship and the RFPL Cup were held at the beginning of 2017, but formally the winner could not be called the champion of Russia. Accordingly, it is the winner of the current Russian e-football championship that will receive such a status.

Who to follow?

The main character of Russian e-football is Andrey "Timon" Guryev. Having started playing FIFA in 2009, today the Nizhny Novgorod player is not only the strongest player in Russia, but also one of the best players in the world. In 2017, according to the results of the FIFA Cyberfootball World Cup, Andrey took 11th place out of 32 participants, a year earlier he finished fourth at the Electronic Sports World Cup. On the home arena in 2017, he had no equal: Andrey won the championship and the RFPL Cup, playing for CSKA.

Andrey's main competitor should be Robert "ufenok77" Fakhretdinov. Back in 2014, at the same ESWC, he took second place, and last summer he moved to Lokomotiv from Ufa, for which he played at RFPL tournaments - this was the first official transfer in the history of domestic e-football.

In general, e-football players actively participate in the life of the clubs they play for. For example, before the match "Lokomotiv" - "Krasnodar", which took place last Monday, everyone could play with "Ufenk" right in front of the stadium.

When are they playing?

At the moment, the names of 18 participants in the final stage are known, and the next online qualifiers will be held on October 28 - everyone who wants to register for