S8UL turned the primary Indian esports group to win the highly-coveted Content material Group of the 12 months award within the Esports Awards 2022 on Wednesday.
S8UL’s success has come from understanding what’s esports, content material, and enterprise ecosystem – and extra particularly understanding break the principles of that ecosystem. A big chunk of S8UL’s success and progress over the past 12 months or so has come from placing their gaming creators within the highlight, relatively than video games and esports itself.
A typical S8UL content material piece revolves round their community of greater than 50 gaming creators collaborating in native developments with cultural twists. They’re additionally not afraid to lean into both Bollywood or India’s very area of interest meme tradition.
This has resulted in them simply tapping into the bigger Indian popular culture scene on YouTube, which has a selected person base that they captured – to the tune of 1.03m subscribers on the time of writing. All of this has helped them turn out to be the voice of the gaming subculture in India.
@ S8UL
S8UL Beat Some Massive Names
The Esports Awards 2022 have been hosted in Las Vegas, with lots of the greatest names within the trade attending the occasion. S8UL needed to beat some esports heavyweights like 100 Thieves, FaZe Clan, OTK, G4TV, and Tribo Gaules to get their arms on the large prize, which makes this achievement much more spectacular. The class that S8UL received concerned public voting, so it’s truthful to say that there was a numerical benefit for a crew coming from India. Nonetheless, to garner as a lot help within the Indian ecosystem which could be very younger and has no international recognition in any respect, is a feat in itself.
PUBG Cellular esports participant Animesh Agarwal aka 8bit Thug, Naman Mathur aka Soul Mortal, and Lokesh Jain aka 8bit Goldy have joint possession of S8UL. S8UL was shaped solely two years in the past and shortly turned a sensation after a few of the best esports personalities within the nation joined arms to type the group.
S8UL have a boot camp in Mumbai, with India’s finest PUBG cellular crew underneath their ranks. They’ve additionally had another fashionable Indian content material creators on their roster, like Scout, Mavi, Mamba, and Regaltos.
They’re India’s hottest esports group and have been on the forefront of selling the trade via numerous social media channels like YouTube, Instagram, and Discord. Earlier than they clinched the title, they’d already made historical past by being the primary Indian esports group to get nominated for the Esports Awards.
Mortal is taken into account some of the recognizable faces in esports in India and understandably emotional following the large information. He has been nominated for Esports Awards in earlier years alongside a few of the greatest names within the esports trade like Faker and Goldenboy.
“Phrases fail me as I see our dream as a dream crew come true. Seeing us being celebrated by the worldwide esports group, it’s an actual feeling. It’s actually time to pause, mirror and really feel completely satisfied,” he mentioned.
What Does This Imply For Indian Esports?
There isn’t as a lot resistance in direction of a profession in esports in India in the present day. Many nice esports gamers in India have revealed that their households have been extremely supportive regardless of having reservations initially.
The extra vital problem in recent times has been making a reputation exterior India. This is without doubt one of the few events the place an Indian esports group has been acknowledged globally. This second will possible persuade many different gamers {that a} profession throughout the esports trade is viable.
A 2022 report from FICCI-EY Media said that the variety of esports gamers doubled in 2021 to 600,000 in 2021, and income within the trade grew by 29% from INR 7.5 billion in 2020 to INR 9.7 billion in 2021.
The report added that these numbers will probably be better within the coming years. One factor is for sure: S8UL have performed an enormous half within the progress of the esports trade and can proceed to take action.
