The winners of the Esports Championship Series (ECS) Development League Community Caster Challenge have been announced – and there are several from the UK scene.
Over the past two weeks, over 170 hopeful casters have been streaming the ECS Development League live on Twitch.
An ECS team led by Dan Kapadia and James Bardolph have been watching the stream in the hope of finding the next great casters in CSGO.
The four winners – who will get the chance to cast in season two of the ECS – are as follows:
- Joshua “xDowsey” Dowse (Australian, 22) – Dowsey is well-known in the UK scene, having cast NUEL matches, i58, League of Legends, Overwatch and more
- Jack Evans (British, 21) – Jack started casting for Oxford University’s varsity LAN against Cambridge, and has cast several times for the NUEL
- Jamie “SwitchBladeJay” Martin (British, 19) – Jamie has streamed the Student Gaming Championships and CSGO games, including for UKCSGO.com, Skylla.gg, epic.LAN and more
- William Robert Dallas III (American, 29) – William has cast LAN events at Fragadelphia, after starting out trolling casual games with a “1920’s Golden-Age-Radio Voice”, and just happened to be playing with some YouTubers who noticed him
The casters will cast live ECS matches alongside the FACEIT professional team at the IMG studios in London during the main season.
“We were blown away by the response from this amazing community,” said Daniel Kapadia, ECS professional caster. “We had a blast watching everyone’s submissions and it is truly humbling to be able to provide an opportunity to these fantastic personalities.”
Dowsey added: “I saw this as a really great opportunity to gain experience as a CSGO caster, as we had the opportunity to broadcast daily, and the teams were all of a high skill level.
“Jack and I both sat down to research all of the European teams. We built up our knowledge of the teams and the players, creating statistic sheets and finding out random trivia. The challenge provided the perfect platform to improve as a caster!”
A video series will promote the casters and will run from October 7th on www.twitch.tv/faceittv.
There’s more information on the ECS website.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
