FIFA eSports - What does the future hold?

- Hi, my name is Liam AKA known as REAPERZz and I'm a professional FIFA Player for Northampton town.

If you told me you could play FIFA competitively for life-changing prize money a few years ago I would have set you a liar in fact if you speak to anyone outside the FIFA community, they will still think you're a liar, but it's real with prize money reaching into the hundred thousands FIFA eSports is serious stuff.
During this short documentary we're gonna look into what it takes to play FIFA as your job. And is it all what it's cracked up to be. This is FIFA eSports.

Before we get into this I thought it would be great for me to introduce myself I'm Miles also known as MeelayyB and I'm what your classes in entertainment within the FIFA world, with having a YouTube channel with over 72 thousand subscribers and uploading FIFA content on there every few days I guess you could say I'm a bit of a FIFA geek however, there's a boundary that separates the entertainers from the professionals meet Liam he's a professional FIFA Player for Northampton Town Football Club yes, a real football club had a dedicated FIFA Player just to play FIFA representing them.
In fact, a lot of clubs around the world of started getting involved Ajax, PSG, Man City, Borussia Dortmund just to name a few with me and Liam being friends for the YouTube world it was easy enough to get in contact in for this documentary and luckily he said he would love to be involved so we jumped in the car and made our way down to Northampton to find out what competitive FIFA was like on the other side of the bubble.

- Good to see you bro;

- Good to see you, bro good to see you.

- So I guess you can have a look around in the state that your.

- Yes a 100% mate 100%, let me show you the Game Zone.

As well as playing FIFA competitively for Northampton Liam also helps out around Northampton Stadium by running a small area called The Game Zone which allows fans of Northampton to test their FIFA skills before kick off a match day.

-See every match day this is on from when the gates open at obviously if it's an early kick-off 12 o'clock, but if it's a normal three o'clock kick off, it opens at one and it goes all the way through until three o'clock and then obviously it shuts down because everyone's getting ready for the big the big 90minutes.

The thing that surprised me most about Liam is how much he was willing to get involved in the community side things in Northampton helping people get introduced into eSports world and most importantly getting kids engaged within the industry.

-So obviously me and you are friends but as far as going in the FIFA eSports scene do you think it's better with having support from a club.

-Well, I started playing competitive FIFA for like two years now, and I've always wanted to have that sort of background whether somebody that I can sort of turn back to, so obviously having a football club to support me in pretty much every decision I make is incredible. It's a decision that I never thought was gonna happen to me. So it's pretty surreal so when when you look at it from sort of a background and sort of from a family perspective they obviously go wow like you're supported by a football team. So obviously when I come up here, it seems surreal when I like meet fans that watch me on YouTube and stuff. It's pretty crazy to be fair I obviously started to go out there and search myself for, not so much a football team, but some funder behind me and literally I picked up the phone and spoke to Northampton and they literally apparently came out of a meeting talking about eSports and FIFA so it's sort of one of them things that just matched and hopefully well not hopefully it happened.

As much as most people don't want to believe it Liam was right eSports and football clubs as newly formed and I can honestly see every Club in the UK soon having a player who represents them after looking around Northampton Stadium I wanted to see where it all started in Liam's bedroom. So we took a 20 minute drive back down to his headquarters.

-So the all of these are like the tournaments that I've won some tournaments don't have checks obviously, these are sort of novelty checks because obviously you can't take them to the banks and stuff but this was my first ever event tournament that I've ever been to.

-So these are like major events. They're just like prize money

-Yeah, so these are sort of events that anybody can turn up to but there's obviously a nice reward at the end of it. It's like Sometimes I've been to events and I've won all three days sometimes I've been to other events and only managed to win two that event I managed to win four out four so it's just it all depends on sort of the form that you go into the event with.

-These are just like gaming events that you do.

-Yeah yeah so these events that I do are called insomnia. So they’re hosted like three times a year as you can tell there's insomnia 54 55 and then obviously there was no checks at 56 and etc. Etc. But It was honestly the that first event changed my life. That was where it all changed literally I won my first tournament and then an eSports team picked me up and from than on literally it hasn't stopped. It just hasn't stopped and now look I'm signed by Northampton Town representing a dream football club.

This is only the start for Liam and more importantly the start for eSports within the FIFA franchise where will FIFA eSports be within a few years. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.