Aberdeen FC, alongside leading gaming organisations, held its first esports tournament on Friday 16 September at Pittodrie Stadium.

Capitalising on the growing popularity of esports, the Club teamed up with GAME, the UK’s leading games retailer, and Belong, operators of the largest gaming arenas in the UK, running a FIFA 22 tournament as well as a whole host of activities for supporters on the day in the Richard Donald Stand Lounges.

TOURNAMENT SUMMARY

1^st – Ben Galloway
2^nd – Thomas Ogston
3^rd – Nathan Robb
4^th – Nathan Murray

64 Competitors battled it out on PS5s over 4 hour intense hours of friendly but fierce competition!

Ben Galloway won out in a tense final, eventually decided by a penalty shoot-out! Ben went home with a whole host of prizes:

Cash prize of £75
️ A state of the art gaming monitor provided by Softcat
️ 4 Match tickets for an Aberdeen game at Pittodrie Stadium
The opportunity to play an AFC First Team Player at FIFA!

The other 3 semi-finalists also walked away with a cash prize and 2 match tickets for an Aberdeen game at Pittodrie.

Both Semi-Finals and the Final were played on the Grand Final stage, with live commentary provided by Andy Bargh and shown on a projector within the room and streamed on AFC’s brand new Twitch channel

Speaking to RedTV after the tournament, winner Ben Galloway said, “I wasn’t sure how I’d get on but delighted to win the tournament and hopefully there are more coming up soon!”

SPECTATOR ACTIVITES & PRIZES

Over 200 supporters attended on the evening, taking in the entertainment provided by the players as well as other gaming stations throughout the lounge, including FIFA 22, retro games and a Sim Rig Fastest Lap competition.

Rob Wicks, Aberdeen FC’s Commercial Director, said: “This is an opportunity for us to start exploring the opportunity of esports. It gives us an opportunity to engage a new demographic, the average age of people here is 16 to 18, a hard-to-reach audience. We are hugely excited about the potential that this holds. Watching the faces, seeing the smiles as the goals go in, it’s been great to see tonight”.

There was a Retro Gaming area – kindly prepared by AFC Heritage Trust – which was a hit with all ages!

Our partners GT Omega, provided a gaming chair for the fastest lap on on our sim rig on the night too.

A winning time of 1:32:975 at Brands Hatch was enough to win Nico his new chair.

There was also the chance to Win a digital copy of FIFA 23 on PS5. Spectators simply needed to sign up to our AFC newsletter on the evening to be in with a chance of winning, which will be announced once FIFA 23 has been released.