Svenska Spel has announced that it will fund the expansion of Esportshall, Sweden’s leading esports coaching and mentoring organisation.

Sweden’s state-owned lottery operator will become the principal sponsor of Esportshall new ‘Grassroots Cup’ tournaments, an amateur series seeking to uncover the next generation of Swedish talents across all major formats of competitive gaming.

Esportshall was established by former CSGO player Tommy “Potti” Ingemarsson as Sweden’s first municipally backed training facility for esports in the town of Uddevalla within the region of Vastra.

Having grown its facilities across Sweden, Esportshall training programmes are backed by Corsair, Lenovo and Intel.

“We need more grassroots movements in Sweden for e-sports to be able to grow and flourish to their full potential. In recent years, the Elite Series has successfully helped to strengthen Swedish e-sports.” Ingemarsson commented

The elite series has already produced both players and teams that maintain a high international level. Therefore, we need more amateur competitions that continue to strengthen e-sports and give beginners the chance to compete and develop. Therefore, we are happy to now be able to present our collaboration with Esportshall and Svenska Spel”.

Svenska Spel will launch a ‘Grassroots Cup’ tournaments schedule this Autumn, with events  coinciding with Esportshall wider Elite Series tour.

“Svenska Spel wants to be involved in developing Swedish e-sports, from grassroots to elite. We are therefore very happy to be able to participate and enable these grassroots cups at Esportshall together with the Elite Series. To give the younger players a clear context to practice e-sports, where association life is also present, we believe is important going forward for Swedish e-sports” – said Jimmy Sandberg sponsorship project manager at Svenska Spel.