National ESL launches into North America

The new league, National ESL, will focus on North American eSports with a release date of July 5th.

NEW YORK- In preparation for the 2010 qualification of Intel Extreme Masters, Turtle Entertainment releases its new league for North America, National Electronic Sports League (National ESL). The league will feature major community leaders to run its league operations with a focus on building from inside the community.

Leading National ESL will be Trevor “Midway” Schmidt, founder and former owner of GotFrag.com. Schmidt established and created the community around GotFrag while building one of the strongest brands in eSports. He is considered by many to be one of the key community members in eSports. Schmidt will head a team made up of famous league administrator including John Clark and Steve “xterm” Devaney, two veterans in their field.

"I have been looking for an opportunity to make an impact on eSports in the USA in a way that can be meaningful and help push eSports forward,” said Schmidt, National Head of National ESL. “This is a real opportunity to take advantage of ESL’s success and expand the company into North American eSports and help improve one of the biggest events in the eSports calendar in Intel Extreme Masters for North America."

The new National ESL will use the existing ESL website system which currently supports 1.6 million unique visitors per month, due to over 2,500,000 ESL members. Each year ESL conducts over 100 eSports events while hosting 400,000 matches in its website per month.

National ESL’s new website will go live on July 5th with the release of Intel Extreme Master’s North American Qualification information including its North American LAN Finals and prize money.

Intel Extreme Masters

The Intel® Extreme Masters is the global league of video game champions since 2006. The league arranges the hardest and most popular competitions in Counter-Strike, World of Warcraft and Quake Live. eSports champions from Europe, Asia and America. Live tournaments at the world’s largest IT- and Gaming conventions feature the top performers of the season - global stars in eSports. The fourth season had its exciting final at CeBIT 2010, finding the top teams and players in the Intel® Extreme Masters World Championship. The IPTV station ESL TV presents the best games of the season live and reports directly from the offline events.

Further information is available at: www.intelextrememasters.com or http://www.intel.com/consumer/game/teams/events.htm

Turtle Entertainment GmbH

Turtle Entertainment was founded in 2000. The company quickly grew to be the European leader in the sector of electronic sports (eSports). The Electronic Sports League (ESL), operated by Turtle Entertainment, is active in 37 different countries worldwide. The league portal www.esl.eu reaches above ten million visits a month generated by more than 2,5 million registered users. Turtle Entertainment broadcasts ESL events via IPTV channel ESL TV since 2007. The headquarter has over 170 employees and is located in Cologne, Germany. Turtle Entertainment owns the majority of the Chinese eSports league PGL (Pro Gamer League) since 2007. Important business partners of Turtle Entertainment are global corporations such as Intel, Alienware, ASUS, adidas, Volkswagen, Nokia, Trend Micro, Sennheiser, Windows 7, Sidewinder, Razer and gamed.de.