Coronavirus pandemic

Your Daily Dose: 5 e-sports streams to watch

Just because the sports world has stopped doesn't mean your sports consumption has to. In the fourth part of this Daily Dose series, Sazali Abdul Aziz highlights five e-sports streams to watch.

E-sports star Tyler Blevins aka Ninja on Instagram: "A reminder to wash your hands, stay inside, and play video games." PHOTO: INSTAGRAM/NINJA
Phoenix Suns, with Ty Jerome (inset, below) in control, beating Minnesota Timberwolves, guided by Josh Okogie (inset, top), 93-96. PHOTO: TWITCH/PHOENIX SUNS

1 STREAM: TWITCH.TV/IBAI

GAME: FIFA 20

La Liga games may be suspended due to the coronavirus outbreak but you can still catch some of its stars in action.

A Fifa 20 competition featuring one player from each of the 20 Spanish football clubs will take place from today till Sunday.

This is your chance to see if the likes of Marco Asensio (Real Madrid), Adnan Januzaj (Real Sociedad), Marcos Llorente (Atletico Madrid) and Manu Morlanes (Villarreal) are as good with a controller in their hands as they are with a ball at their feet.

2 WWW.TWITCH.TV/PHOENIX_SUNS

NBA 2K20

Football is not the only real-life sport moving into the digital world.

National Basketball Association (NBA) team Phoenix Suns refused to let Covid-19 put a halt to their season, and a message on the team's Twitter account last week declared that their games would continue - but on the NBA 2K20 platform.

E-sports star Tyler Blevins aka Ninja on Instagram: "A reminder to wash your hands, stay inside, and play video games." PHOTO:INSTAGRAM/NINJA

The Suns streamed an online game with the Dallas Mavericks last Saturday, which ended in a 150-136 defeat. They followed it up with a 93-63 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Wednesday, with Suns guard Ty Jerome playing against Wolves' Josh Okogie.

They will next play against the LA Clippers (tomorrow, Singapore time) and Mavericks (Sunday), and have hinted at getting more players to take over the controllers.

3 WWW.TWITCH.TV/RIOTGAMES

LEAGUE OF LEGENDS

Riot Games, developers of League of Legends (LoL), have announced that the LoL European Championship (LEC) and LoL Championship Series competitions will resume this weekend and be played remotely. The LEC, which is normally contested in front of a live studio audience in Berlin, was suspended since March 12.

The move to reinstate the two competitions - which each draw an average of 200,000 viewers with a peak of about 400,000 on streams - comes after the successful resumption of the China-based League of Legends Pro League as an entirely online competition earlier this month.

A link to the full broadcast schedule of matches can be found on Riot Games' Twitch page.

4 MIXER.COM/NINJA

FORTNITE BATTLE ROYALE

You may know Fortnite as the game that inspired footballers from Antoine Griezmann to Dele Alli to perform celebrations like "Take the L" and the "Floss".

The game remains popular and few streamers are as strongly followed as Tyler Blevins, more famously known to e-sports fans as Ninja. He has a staggering 23 million subscribers on YouTube.

His charismatic, entertaining reactions are a perfect complement to gaming, and he is still streaming Fortnite games on Microsoft's Mixer platform.

5 WWW.TWITCH.TV/FORMULA1

F1 2019

You can follow the Formula 1 E-sports Series here and witness even more risk-taking manoeuvres than you would at the Marina Bay Street Circuit.

As head of F1 E-sports Julian Tan explains, the racing here is compelling.

"If they crash, they aren't going to incur... damage or injure themselves," he said.

"The result of that is... a level of racing entertainment that you just can't replicate in real life."

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on March 20, 2020, with the headline Your Daily Dose: 5 e-sports streams to watch. Subscribe