Update: The finals will be taking place this weekend on October 1st and 2nd 2022, and team Lunatics will be taking part after winning the UK qualifier on September 23rd.
Original article: Ubisoft has announced a Challenger Series esports tournament for its Roller Champions 3v3 sports game, and UK-based business Greyscale will be running the official broadcast.
It’s the first competitive series in Roller Champions, and will allow teams from across Europe to take part in qualifiers to become the national team for their country, before progressing to an international championship.
Greyscale, the esports broadcast production company which launched earlier this summer, is also teaming up with tournament platform Challengermode for the Challenger Series.
Greyscale co-founder Jakub ‘Atroix’ Szmyt said they will be paving the esports ecosystem in Roller Champions alongside Challengermode as they look to ‘create a great experience for all’.
Atroix told Esports News UK: “We’re excited to be working alongside Challengermode to provide the first broadcast for the Roller Champions esports ecosystem. Having an opportunity like this to help shape an esports scene is rare, especially for a publisher as big as Ubisoft, but we’re going to do it justice.
“We’ll provide an awesome broadcast and a great working environment for our crew and talent by bringing in TV experience from both myself and Felix [Möller], who is the production manager for this project and a co-founder of Greyscale.”
Atroix, Greyscale
Roller Champions launched in May on Xbox One and PS4 and PC, and on the Nintendo Switch in June. Xbox Series X/S and PS5 versions are set to follow. It sees two teams of three players race to be the first to earn five points in seven minutes. Teams score points by throwing the ball into the goal, but first they must skate at least one lap with the ball without being interrupted by their opponents.
There have been rumours in the summer that Roller Champions might shut down after season 3, however the game is still going as we write this and Ubisoft may be using the Challenger Series to gauge the popularity of the game as a potential longer-term esport.
Team registrations for the Roller Champions Challenger Series open on Wednesday September 14th 2022.
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.
