Forget the Chicken Royale – KFC is teaming up with Activision and Call of Duty in the UK to run the KFC Royale.
The fast food restaurant chain is winging its way into esports with the £50,000 tournament featuring Black Ops 4’s BlackOut battle royale mode.
Several big streamers and YouTubers from the UK and Ireland will be taking part, including Vikkstar, Syndicate, Mini Ladd, Zerkaa, Terroriser and others. The full 16 can be found in this tweet from KFC.
Players will have the chance to work their way through the qualifiers to play with those streamers in the grand final.
Will the tournament be full of clutch cluck plays? Will fans be egg-cited about the tournament? Will we see some top matches or will the players just wing it? Ahem.
It seems KFC has gone down the streamer route rather than including pro CoD esports players, of which there are a fair few from the UK.
Qualifiers start today from 7pm (January 17th) and include duo and quad matches. There will be 16 qualifiers in the KFC Royale running mainly from Wednesday to Friday each week, with the grand finals taking place on February 24th.
Entrants can play in up to 8 of the 16 qualifiers, and the winner of each qualifier (who gets the most kills) will progress to the grand finals.
Each streamer will be spectating and livestreaming their specific qualifier whilst remaining on the lookout for their own player to cross the road duo with. They certainly won’t be looking for fowl plays or players left with egg on their faces.
Alongside the £50,000 prize pool, KFC is also running a competition alongside the tournament to give away a year’s supply of KFC, a limited edition PS4 500 Million console and a KFC gaming ‘care package’ to those who register for the giveaway on the KFC Royale website and acquire tickets to increase their chances of winning.
KFC Gaming made the initial tournament announcement on Twitter, where they have been posting gaming memes and growing their presence to some 30,000 followers since September 2018:
KFC Gaming x @CallofDutyUK present #KFCRoyale
? £50,000 prize pool
? KFC Black Card
? 16 Creators looking for their duo
Time to make a name for yourself. pic.twitter.com/HwxeGTpXio
— KFC Gaming (@kfcgaming) January 14, 2019
Will the KFC Royale be finger ‘lickin good? Will the Colonel be happy with it? We don’t care at this point, we racked up a moderate amount of chicken puns in this article and now we’ll be getting the hell hen out of here.
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.
