Usain Bolt’s Irish esports organisation, Wylde, have been on the hunt to find Jamaica’s top FIFA player with the Jamaica Esports Initiative.
It’s part of a partnership with Digicel, a leading Caribbean digital operator, and the Jamaican Esports Initiative, a national federation similar to British Esports.
The search for Jamaica’s best strikers kicked off August 10th 2022 with online FIFA PS4 preliminaries and continued until the offline and live FIFA final on August 13th at the Digicel HQ in Kingston, Jamaica.
The competition final took place at the launch event for Digicel’s newest digital property, GameNation, a web-based gaming platform.
The winner of the tournament – Tahjay ‘IncontrolTahj’ Solomon – was crowned Jamaica’s best FIFA Player. He also won a trip to Ireland for Wylde’s esports bootcamp, and the potential opportunity to join the Wylde team for the upcoming FIFA 23 season.
⚡️⚡️We have CHAMPION ⚡️⚡️
— WYLDE (@WYLDE_gg) August 14, 2022
Confident, cool and focussed, Tahjay Solomon (@Incontrol_Tahj) takes the CROWN as the best FIFA player in Jamaica 🇯🇲.
Huge respect to all 8 amazing finalists and massive credit to @digiceljamaica and its partners for hosting this landmark event! pic.twitter.com/diTiojwLTL
“The Wylde x Digicel search for Jamaica’s best FIFA talent is an exciting, new initiative for esports in the Caribbean. With Wylde’s co-owner, Usain Bolt, being from Jamaica, we know that serious competitive talent exists in this region.
“Through Digicel’s channels SportsMax, Loop and GameNation, supported by Jamaica Esports Initiative, we want to find and empower new talent in FIFA and other esports here in Jamaica,” said Steve Daly, CEO of Wylde.
Commenting on the new initiative and partnership with Wylde, Tari Lovell, head of marketing of Digital Services at Digicel Group, said: “We are extremely excited to be partnering with Wylde and the Jamaica Esports Initiative to help take gaming in the Caribbean to the next level.
“Gaming is a global industry that is growing, and set to continue to do so; we want to ensure that Jamaica and the Caribbean are not left behind.”
This latest announcement by Wylde follows their Rainbow Six win at Gamers Without Borders, and a successful debut at the Gamers8 tournament, where Wylde’s Siege team fought off international competition to the semi-final stage.
Additionally, Wylde’s team was voted most popular team at the Gamers8 event, and won several key prizes at the global competition.
For more information in regards to the FIFA initiative, visit www.jamaicaesports.org
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.
