Did you know there’s an Asian Electronic Sports League (ESL)?

What is the Electronic Sports League (ESL)? If you’re not into eSports, the name might not ring a bell. But the ESL heads the operations of the Intel Extreme Masters, among many other eSporty things, and it touched down in Singapore this week to kickstart the Singapore leg of the Intel Extreme Masters Season 8.

And of course, it also has an Asian arm of operations. Headquartered in China, ESL Asia is about ten men strong, and is headed by Mickaël Piantchenko, whose role is to care for the burgeoning company.

Set up in 2007, the ESL Asia brand is owned by Hong Kong registered, China-based company PGL Co. Ltd. This ownership explains why it mostly concentrates on China, having had a presence in the recently concluded World Gamemaster Tournament 2013 and hosting regular ‘Go4’ branded competitions.

“We’re always finding new markets to develop into,” Piantchenko said, when asked why they decided to start in China. ESL entered the Chinese fray at a time where things were starting to heat up in Chinese eSports, and Piantchenko went from an ex-ESL volunteer in Europe doing his Masters degree in Hong Kong to working officially at ESL Asia.

ESL Asia is looking out of the Middle Kingdom, though. “Recently we’ve started to say that is we’re in China, we can also easily start to spread to Southeast Asia and the rest of Asia. There are a lot of markets here, and people are ready to have consistency in their tournaments,” Piantchenko said. It’s already working on Call of Duty: Ghosts console tournaments in Hong Kong together with Microsoft, and is eyeing several other territories as well. And just how is it going to do it?

IEM Singapore 2012’s grand finals between Sting and Grubby

“Now what we’re doing in Asia is to have new local partners, in the Philippines for example, and in Hong Kong and Japan. These people will take care of the ESL in their countries[…]” Piantchenko said. That sounds promising, but why hasn’t Asia heard of this yet?

“It’s because these partnerships are very new, and we’re all waiting for 2014,” he continued, when asked about the lack of information. “We’ve had a soft launch and we could have made a big press release and said we have new partners and we’re going to do this and this, but we also pretty much like to work quietly in the dark, and then one day, ESL will be here.”

Working quietly seems to be a trait common to the ESL; the Intel Extreme Masters has, in both the years it has come to Singapore, seemingly arrived out of nowhere and with very short notice. This year’s Intel Extreme Masters Singapore is happening this weekend at the SITEX IT fair in the Singapore Expo (Hall 4B) — and we learned of it just a month ago!

Still, it’s going to be running for the next three days, up till Sunday, December 1, 2013, and will be featuring a whole host of talented (and famous) eSports stars. Spectators are quite welcome, and feel free to bring signs to flash on the live stream!

As for those of you who want to know what ESL Asia will have to offer for sure beyond the Intel Extreme Masters Singapore: “Let’s just say you’ll have ESL in the Philippines, and in Hong Kong too,” says Piantchenko.

UPDATE 29-11-2013: PGL Co. Ltd is a company registered in Hong Kong but based in China. We have edited the article to reflect this.