FC Bayern has announced the formation of its NBA 2K esports team. (Photo by Philipp Guelland/Getty Images)
FC Bayern Munich, a sports club in Germany known for its championship soccer team, is launching a gaming division with an NBA 2K team.
The club recently announced the formation of Bavaria Ballers Gaming, an esports division that will live within the club’s basketball group, FC Bayern Basketball. The organization will host tryouts beginning this Friday and draft a total of eight players to play NBA 2K for FC Bayern Munich, who will compete in Take-Two Interactive’s NBA2K simulation on Playstation 4.
In a statement, Andreas Burkert, the head of media and communications at FC Bayern Basketball, said the esports team will be a test as FC Bayern Munich works to dip its toes into “the rapidly growing field” of esports for the first time.
Players from German-speaking countries, including Austria and Switzerland, are eligible to apply. The first application phase ends on May 10. A panel will choose 40 candidates to compete in Munich at a competition the last week of May dubbed the Audi Dome eCup (named after the basketball team’s Audi-Dome Arena). Those recruited to the final eight will begin team training in June with the first official matches scheduled for August.
SportTechie Takeaway
FC Bayern Munich has been itching to enter the world of esports for the last few years. In 2016, Oliver Voss of the German-language publication WirtschaftsWoche reported that Bayern Munich had been reportedly exploring options to launch an esports division to expand its global reach.
At the time, Bayern Munich Director of Media, Digital and Communication Stefan Mennerich said the club was analyzing esports “very closely” and had planned to make a decision on whether to pursue an esports team by the end of the year. Forbes, in reporting that news, said clubs in Germany were eyeing the soccer game FIFA, as well as non-sports games such as League of Legends and Overwatch. There was no mention of NBA 2K.
It might seem odd, therefore, that FC Bayern Munich has chosen to lead its esports division with an NBA 2K team, rather than with FIFA. European soccer clubs Paris Saint-German and Manchester City are among the influential teams that have entered the esports fray through FIFA. FC Schalke, the second-biggest German soccer club behind FC Bayern, has signed more than a dozen FIFA players and also has a League of Legends team that competes in the European League of Legends Championship.
NBA 2K, however, has exploded in popularity over the past year as the NBA has prepared to launch the NBA 2K League, the first esports league owned and operated by a professional sports league. The NBA hosted the inaugural draft of the NBA 2K League earlier this month at Madison Square Garden, in which 102 gamers were drafted from an initial qualifier that yielded 72,000 players.
Last week, the NBA 2K League, which kicks off officially at the end of May, said that it would host games on Amazon social streaming service Twitch, a site that has long been popular among the global esports fan base. The streaming deal will include up to 199 regular season games played on NBA 2K as well as three in-season tournaments and the entire finals. Analysts will provide commentary on game action, while Twitch will work with the league to build customer graphics and help build fan engagement.
The inaugural season of the NBA 2K League will kickoff with 17 teams, all owned by NBA franchises. But NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said the league is looking to get all 30 NBA teams onboard by the third season, followed by a global expansion where there’d eventually be teams based out of foreign cities from Shanghai to, perhaps, Munich.
