Western Digital hosts second edition of the WD_BLACK Cup Esports Tournament for gamers across South Asia

Following the great success of the first edition of WD_BLACK Cup in India earlier this year, Western Digital in association with AMD Ryzen is back with Season 2 of the esports tournament. Together, these popular gaming brands are hosting a 19-day long gaming marathon – WD_BLACK Cup Season 2.

This season, the tournament will be bigger and better with an attractive prize pool of $20,000, a longer duration, and the addition of one more game to intensify the experience. WD_BLACK Cup S2 will feature some of the most seasoned gaming influencers and esports players as they battle it out for top honours across three tracks –

• WD_BLACK Cup Open Qualifiers featuring Valorant and League of Legends and
• The Invitational track featuring Battlegrounds Mobile India

The tournament will be held across regions in South Asia including India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Maldives with an expected viewership of over 8 million.

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Jaganathan Chelliah, Senior Director, India, ME & Africa, Western Digital, said, “The inclusion of esports in the medals category at the Asian games is attracting a lot of young talent to gaming in India. Western Digital is enabling gamers to be battle- ready with or by using our innovative WD_BLACK range of gaming SSDs. The WD_BLACK Cup is our flagship gaming tournament designed to motivate, recognize and reward these budding gamers in India and South Asia, and we are thrilled to have AMD as our partner in this exciting initiative.”

Mukesh Bajpai, India Marketing Head, AMD, said, “Esports continues to be a driving force in the growth of the gaming industry globally and in India. Gaming has long been a target market for AMD, and we have always aimed to understand and deliver to the changing needs of gamers. AMD continues to deliver innovative processors for gaming desktops and notebooks and of course, the major gaming consoles. We are excited to partner with Western Digital in bringing the WD_BLACK Cup esports tournament to the community in India, further empowering gamers to push their boundaries and experience competitive and immersive gaming.”

The tournament began on November 20 with the first track, WD_BLACK Cup S2 Valorant Qualifiers, open to 200 teams. This track is spread across 9 days and will be broadcasted live with single elimination open qualifiers filtered down to top 8 teams, with a total prize pool of $10,000.

The second track, WD_BLACK Cup S2 League of Legends open, offering a prize pool of $3K will commence from 6th December with qualifiers, feature play-offs from 10th December, with the final on December 15th – streamed live on the Skyesports WD Black Cup S2 streaming channel. This track shall feature 32 teams.

The third and last, BGMI Invitational track, is a four-day long marathon that will run in parallel with the League of Legends track from 6th till 9th December, hosting 18 teams and featuring a few top influencers from India, including Soul Esports and Godlike, battling it out for a prize pool of $7,000 navigating across five maps in four days.