The 2021 Esports Awards finalists have been announced for all industry categories and it looks like this years’ awards will be the most competitive yet. The awards ceremony will be held in the Esports Stadium Arlington and the winners will be announced on November 20th.
It is hugely significant to even be a finalist in the awards as this year’s awards ceremony is extremely competitive and the winners will be hotly contested for all categories. Below are some of the top finalists for this year’s 2021 Esports Awards.
The 2021 Esports finalists
For the award of Esports Publisher of the Year, there are nine different finalists and the list includes names both big and small. The finalists are Riot Games, Valve, EA, Activision Blizzard, Epic Games, Tencent, Garena, Ubisoft and Psyonix.
For the category of Esports Game of the Year in association with The Koyo Store, there are 10 finalists. The list of category finalists includes Overwatch, Dota 2, PUBG Mobile, Call of Duty, Rainbow Six Siege, Rocket League, League of Legends, VALORANT, Free Fire and CS:GO.
The Esports Hardware Provider of the Year finalists are Logitech G, ASUS ROG, SteelSeries, Razer, ElGato, Corsair, HyperX, Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Alienware and SecretLab. The Esports Supporting Service of the Year include finalists ESG LAW, Paper Crowns, Mobalytics, Prodigy Agency, Aftershock Media Group, Hitmarker, Discord, ESEA, Creative Artists Agency, Character Select Agency and The Story Mob.
The category closest to our heart has to be the Esports Journalist of the Year category, of which H.B. Duran, Pablo ‘Bloop’ Suarez, Wasif Ahmed, Jacob Wolf, Richard Lewis, Adam Fitch, FionnOnFire, Ashley Kang and Liz Richardson are finalists. Another media-related category is the Esports Coverage Platform of the Year in association with Sizzle Creative. In this category, Esports Insider, Dexerto, The Esports Observer, Upcomer, SiegeGG, Inven Global, EsportsManiacos, Liquipedia, Dot Esports, and HLTV are finalists.
The Esports Broadcast and Production Team of the Year category includes the finalists Riot Games, ESL Gaming, Nerd Street Gamers, Psyonix, Esports Engine, Activision Blizzard, Beyond the Summit, BLAST Premier, Garena and FACEIT.
Clearly the awards this year will be incredibly competitive and there is a huge amount of talent in every single category. Right now is a very exciting time in the esports industry because there is a lot of new talent entering into the industry. Although the awards are now somewhat dominated by large companies and publishing houses, it looks like more niche players will be able to enter the industry in the next decade.
Finland represented in esports
The country of Finland is definitely thought of more for its prowess over winter sports like cross country skiing, downhill skiing, snowboarding and ice skating. However, the long winters have led many young Finnish people to also turn towards esports as a hobby, and the country’s new success in esports shows that it could become a dominant player in the global esports arena in the future.
Along with winter sports and esports, the online gambling and betting industry has also been growing in Finland. And with esports gaining increasing respect as a genuine sport, particularly in Nordic countries, one of the biggest trends right now in Finnish online gambling has been betting on esports. There are a number of different online betting platforms such as Betsafe esports which allow Finnish people to easily check odds, review the stats and place their bets.
The future of esports
Prior to this last year, the future of esports was somewhat uncertain. There was a sense that the audience for esports was limited and realistically could only reach so far. It was viewed by the vast majority of people as something fairly niche, placid and uninteresting.
Over the course of the last 18 months, however, everything changed. The global health crisis has led to sports games, teams and tournaments shutting down in order to respect government-mandated health and safety measures. As a result of the shutdown, many people turned to esports for the first time as a source of entertainment. These were people who previously never would have followed esports or even really known much about it in the first place.
There are now millions of more esports fans than ever before, and the fanbase is only growing. The future of esports looks incredibly bright as new fans have brought new sponsors to the leagues and also given encouragement to leagues of new players. The 2021 Esports Awards are going to be hugely exciting, but every subsequent awards season will be larger, better and more exciting going forward.