Following the successful staging of the I-Bet Supreme FIFA 20 ‘League of Champions’ eSports Tournament, the aforesaid entity alongside its Jamaican parent company Supreme Ventures Limited, has opted to host a Guyana versus Jamaica International Online Football Championship.
This was revealed by local tournament coordinator Michelangelo Jacobus yesterday during an exclusive interview with Stabroek Sport. According to Jacobus, the decision to stage the regional event was birthed after the parent entity concluded its version of the event on June 7th following similar success and fanfare.
He added, “With the iBET Supreme’s inaugural FIFA 20 eSports tournament completed in Guyana a couple of weeks ago, Supreme Ventures Limited, the parent company of iBET Supreme, decided to do a tournament of their own in Jamaica under the JustBet brand, and the response was massive. They had 112 participants and that tournament was completed in two days, on June 6 and 7. I oversaw the technical stuff and they had their people in Jamaica looking over the tournament. Safe to say it was a huge success and the amount of participants was amazing, the level of competition was also high quality.”
Jacobus further added, “After the completion of the Jamaican tournament, we (myself, Dustanni Barrow and our Jamaican colleagues) decided that it would be an excellent idea to have our top four play Jamaica’s top four in what could possibly be the first Regional eSports event. We see this as a way of further establishing eSports in Guyana and Jamaica, and possibly in the Caribbean as a whole. The potential of eSports is virtually limitless and this is just a first small step in a positive direction.”
Guyana will be represented by the quartet of inaugural champion Emuwnah Pross, runner-up Tevin Bremner, third place finisher Jonathan Hutson and fourth positioned Pernell Cummings, with the matches utilizing a home and away aggregate format to decide the outcome.
He added, “This tournament, which we’ll call the SVL (Supreme Ventures Limited) FIFA 20 Caribbean League of Champions will see Guyana’s top four ranked players, (Emuwnah Pross, Tevin Bremner, Jonathan Hutson and Pernell Cummings) clash with Jamaica’s top four in a Super 8 format (Quarter-finals). They will play each other in Home and Away fixtures with the aggregate rule coming into play.”
According to Jacobus, “An exact date for the tournament has not been set as yet but it will take place within the next two weeks while the finer details (prizes etc.) are hammered out. I think this is a great initiative and our Guyanese players have what it takes to take home top honours in this first ever regional eSports event.”
He further revealed, “In addition I’d like to announce that two additional tournaments are in the works, possibly for this month’s end. For now we are sticking with FIFA 20 and we’ll have a PlayStation 4 and Xbox One tournament running simultaneously. More details on that will be released at a later date.”