The Swedish esports organization Ninjas in Pyjamas (NIP) has merged with the Chinese counterpart ESV5 to form a new entity. Reuters reports that the new entity could be listed in the United States by the end of the year making it the first esports team ever to be listed in the US.
For those unfamiliar with esports, it describes the world of competitive, organized video gaming and is already a multi-billion dollar industry. Swedish NIP is one of the world’s best-known esports organizations which recently has had great success with their CS: GO team after recruiting Danish Nicolai “Dev1ce” Reedtz
The Chinese organization ESV5 is also not unknown in the world of sport and the organization has a team, Ultra Prime, in the League of Legends league LPL which is the top-level professional league for League of Legends in China. ESV5 has investors from, among others, the Chinese streaming giant Douyu and the Casio magnate Mario Ho.
According to Reuters, a combined turnover of 61 million dollars is forecasted for 2021.
China is the world’s largest e-sports market and last year had 388 million viewers, which was an increase of 21.3 percent from the previous year.
