Team Nigma And Galaxy Racers Merge With Huge Aspirations
From becoming an international power house in several esports with talent from the MENA region to even thinking about creating their own esports games, Nigma Galaxy forms with huge aspirations.
On one side, you have one of the largest gaming lifestyle organisations in the MENA region, on the other you have one of the longest-standing professional Dota 2 squads with roots in the MENA region. Marrying those based on shared cultural values and thus adding to each other's skillsets from content creation to forming successful esports teams made a lot of sense to the heads behind the merger of Team Nigma and Galaxy Racer, coming together as Nigma Galaxy.
Based in Abu Dhabi with over 100 creators totalling a social media following of 370 million followers and 2 billion viewer minutes a month, Galaxy Racer is a content creator powerhouse in the region, counting creators like Abo Flah, one of the biggest content creators in the region with almost 20 million subscribers on his gaming-focused YouTube channel among their ranks. While Galaxy Racer also had esports divisions for several titles, none of them reached the success that the team around Co-Founders of Team Nigma in Mohamed Morad, Christoph Timm and Kuro "KuroKy" Salehi Takhasomi previously did, counting its members in the exclusive club of Dota 2’s The International winners.
“From the beginning we put our focus on the MENA region” shared Co-Founder of Team Nigma, Mohamed Morad, explaining the team’s own personal connections to the region with several of his team’s members having cultural roots there. Seizing up the competition in other endemic organisations, Nigma and Galaxy Racer connected over their shared interest in Dota 2 and eventually realised during their talks that their goals aligned and going into business with one another could make sense.
“The most exciting thing for us that we will have the opportunity to use our knowledge and experience to try to build teams who are ready for the international stage. At the end of the day, we just want to build championship teams.” Morad explained, adding that they are “looking forward to adding their impact to all the rosters.”
With over 60 players from 22 different countries scattered between eleven different games, the scale of the project is vast, and yet expanding, even with aspirations to extend their involvement in other esports titles too and even going way beyond the ordinary as Morad explains, saying “we want to be represented in all the games and if we feel like it’s not enough for us we might even consider creating our own games.”
As Co-Founder Timm mentions, expanding beyond the MENA region is also a move they may consider in the future, even eyeing involvement in the big esports franchise leagues.
However, for now the organisation is focused on the MENA region and its unrealised potential of a potential player base that’s at least as large as Europe’s. “This merger will allow us to scout more talent and build the infrastructure in the MENA region” Morad explained, pointing towards possibilities of hosting more tournaments to give ground for talent to flourish. Galaxy Racers had previously already organised events like the GIRLGAMER Festival in Dubai, an event celebrating women who compete in esports in the region. Further events such as with eLaLiga are planned.
With the scope of their operation increasing, fans might be concerned that Team Nigma might be losing its identity it had carefully curated since its creation in 2019. However, according to Timm and Morad, exactly this concern was addressed from the beginning, working together with Galaxy Racers to maintain recognisable aspects of each organisation’s identity, starting with the team name and colours. “We put a lot of emphasis on integrating elements from both entities,” said Morad and pointed towards the coincidence of both their names sharing a semantic field in Nigma (Arabic for Star) and Galaxy which became a lucky starting point to find a new name for the division.
The team hopes to bring a lot of their supporters over from their original teams also sharing that they “have some cool surprises also for our fans” and they hope to bring them over to Nigma Galaxy. Expanding the esports' sides content creation capabilities is one of the improvements that fans may look forward to building on the expertise that Galaxy Racers has demonstrated over the last two years.
Another aspect as to why Nigma Galaxy might remain recognisably a Team Nigma endeavour is the continued involvement and inspiration the team will receive from KuroKy who in his 13th year of professional gaming and has won over 5 Million USD in prize money, ranking among the top 10 highest earners in esports history. KuroKy’s skills reach far beyond just the in-game competition but also into business as Morad explains:
“Without KuroKy, all of this would not be possible. He’s the main driver of everything as always if it’s in the game or outside. His knowledge, experience, and vision he brings into the team and into the whole organisation is something which we need and appreciate.”
Had your interest piqued and want to follow Nigma Galaxy? Head over to their website for all the upcoming announcements for which there will no doubt be many.
