Facebook Gaming has updated its Tournaments offering to bring it to gamers around the world, including those in the UK and Ireland.
The feature was previously for bigger live gaming events, but now, given the current circumstances around Covid-19 with more people staying at home, the social media giant is allowing anyone to take part.
Facebook Gaming Tournaments lets users create brackets and organise their own competitions for friends and others in the general public to take part.
The offering lets other users follow along, keeping track of players as they advance through brackets, move up the leaderboards and progress through different tournaments.
Streamers and content creators can also use Tournaments to easily play with their fans and viewers. There’s a mix of games and tournament types that users can select and promote using the social media site.
Users can choose whether to make their tournaments public or private, add co-hosts, set the times of the events and more. There’s of course the option for teams to take part in team-based games or for individuals to get involved with 1-on-1 titles like FIFA, Street Fighter and so on.
Fidji Simo, the head of the Facebook app, said (as reported by the Telegraph): “With everything happening in the world right now, games help people connect while entertaining themselves.
“From virtual spaces where people play together to a new tournament platform for friendly competition, we create products to help people keep connecting. Right now, that seems more important than ever.”
Facebook has been attempting to take market share from other gaming-centric platforms like Twitch and YouTube in recent years. It has attempted to pull some streamers and content creators over to its platform and struck deals with gaming companies, for example Facebook signed an exclusive streaming deal with Gfinity in early 2018.
Other popular tournament and bracket websites include the likes of Challengermode, Battlefy and Challonge.
You can see more esports and gaming headlines around Covid-19 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.
