WESG China Final wraps up in Suzhou

The 2019-2020 World Electronic Sports Games China Final is held in Suzhou, East China's Jiangsu province between Dec 11 and 14. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The China Final of the 2019-2020 World Electronic Sports Games wrapped up in Suzhou, East China's Jiangsu province, on Dec 14.

PSG.LGD and LVG were team champions in DOTA2 and CS:GO respectively, and Zhou Hang (iAsonu) and Wu Congliang took the individual champion awards for StarCraft II and PES 2020.

WESG events have been held for four consecutive years. More than 4,000 individual players and 600 teams applied for this year's competitions, and 200 players made it to the China Final, which is also a qualifier for the WESG 2019-2020 Asia Pacific Final, to be held in Malaysia in January 2020.

Unlike other gaming competitions for specific video games, WESG is a third party e-sports tournament open to various games and players.

It has become the most influential e-sports tournament in the world. The 2019 on-site trails were held in more than 90 countries, and for the first time, WESG relaxed nationality restrictions and allowed teams to contain two foreign players.

The 2018-2019 Global Final, held in March 2019, was a great success, watched online by more than 410 million people around the world.

According to Zhang Rui, general manager of the e-sports department of WESG's organizer Alibaba Sports, after three years of experimenting, the tournament managed to become profitable this year.

After the tournament gains global popularity and a larger market share, copyright will be a significant way to monetize it, though this is still some way off, said Zhang.

Alibaba Sports also cooperates with live-streaming site Douyu and game.tmall.com - the online shopping platform owned by Alibaba Group which sells video gaming accessories - in order to boost fans' engagement in the events, enabling them to watch the games online and buy the products they like.

Zhang said that Alibaba Sports is considering involving new mobile games developed by Aligames in the WESG events to come.

This year WESG is also joined by many countries from Latin America and Central Asia. "Many foreign teams are excited to participate in WESG, because this is a good opportunity to play on a global stage," said Zhang.