The Indian multinational conglomerate company will be providing deeper into the profitable business of mobile and online gaming by hosting an esports event known as the JioMart Gameathon in October. The Free Fire tournament will be the 1st in a series of events that the firm is planning to hold, and it is marketing the idea under its JioGames platform. To reminisce, JioGames was declared along with JioFiber set-top box at its 42nd Annual General Meeting in 2019. While the application is still in its beta version, has over 5M downloads on the Play store.
The Free Fire tournament will be held from 30th October to 1st November and will have a live broadcast through YouTube and also through JioTV, as per a support page made for the competition. It will have a prize pool of INR 25,000 with the winning team will get INR 16,000, for the runner-up position INR 12,000 is set, and Rs. 1,000 for the most appreciated player. The money will be accredited to the players’ JioMart wallet. It is going to be a mobile-only tournament, and tablets, triggers, emulators, and others will not be permitted.
Image from Jio
Registrations for JioMart Gameathon (#GetSetGame) are going to be open from 26th October to 29th October via the JioGames portal. It will be a 4-stage tournament beginning with a succeeding stage on 30th -31st October from 11 am. After that, quarter-finals will start from 11 am to 3 pm, semi-finals will begin from 1 pm to 4 pm, and the grand finale to start from 5 pm to 8 pm on 31st October.
A total of 576 teams would come in the qualifying stage which is divided into 48 lobbies and the top 2 teams from each lobby would enter into the quarter-finals. The 96 teams will then contest in 8 lobbies and the top 3 teams from each will enter into the semi-finals. The 24 winning teams will battle in 2 lobbies in the semi-finals and 6 from each will enter into the finals. The grand finale will have only one lobby and 3 maps will be played to announce the winners. The registration page has information about the scoring system, in-game and device situations, and general rules and regulations.
Reliance Jio has had a concentration in gaming for a while now. In a televised sit-down with Microsoft’s Chief Executive Officer in 2020’s February, Reliance’s Chairman had said that gaming will be better than music, movies, and tv all put together. Microsoft had to approve that it was associating with Jio to bring Project xCloud to the country. The Indian telecom industry had also live-streamed a League of Legends World Championship on JioTV in the year, 2018.
