ESL Premiership Brings VALORANT And Wild Rift Competition To The UK

ESL Gaming and Intel have announced the renewal of their partnership for the ESL Premiership, a UK and Ireland focused competition that has been going strong in esports titles such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and League of Legends. Moreover, the host of the competition, ESL UK, has added both League of Legends: Wild Rift and VALORANT, both games of developer and publisher Riot Games, to its circuit. £10,000 in prizes are up for grabs just in VALORANT and everyone can participate through the Premiership's open qualifier.

"It's been exciting to see the tremendous growth of the Valorant community over the past 12 months," said Mark Walton, EMEA Graphics and Gaming Comms Manager at Intel in an official press release. In June 2020, Riot Games had released its free-to-play hero shooter in a unique rollout on Twitch.tv, allowing players to gain beta access by watching streamers play the game. Since then, the game has built a solid foundation for its esport, with the developer currently hosting a global circuit in the VALORANT Champions Tour but also allowing other smaller tournaments to use its game for competition.

How To Participate In ESL Premiership

For VALORANT, teams with a minimum of five players with at least three coming from the UK or Ireland can sign up for the two qualifiers that kick off on May 31st and June 2nd respectively. After the initial two qualifiers, the eight qualifying teams will be put into a round-robin competition with two groups of four teams fighting for playoff qualification on June 26th.

Games will be broadcast on ESL's VALORANT Twitch channel starting on June 7th with the VALORANT UK&I Skirmish broadcast sporting fun features like the Intel PREMVP, which aims to highlight the best plays of the competition, as well as the Intel Team Comms, giving viewers a unique insight look into the communication of the best teams competing at the event.


Image via ESL UK