If there was one trend we saw becoming more predominant last year, it was eSports. It looks like this is only going to grow, with Alienware, for one, throwing even more muscle behind competitive gaming.

Indeed, most recently, Alienware and Team Liquid announced that the second Alienware training facility in Utrecht, Netherlands, was underway, following on from the opening of the first 3 000+ m² facility in Los Angeles last year, which has been serving as the US headquarters for the eSports organisation.

Announcing the new development at CES earlier this month, the second facility is intended to become the European headquarters and an additional training hub for Team Liquid athletes competing across the world.

The duo further announced that they have entered into “the most extensive and comprehensive hardware partnership in esports to date.” Essentially, it means that Team Liquid’s athletes will now train, compete, live-stream and help in the development across the full portfolio of Alienware desktops, notebooks, premium displays, gaming headsets, and peripherals. Alienware noted that this end-to-end hardware collaboration will give both organisations the ability to design and refine new iterations of elite gaming hardware and peripherals.

That’s not all the evidence that Alienware is giving the rise of eSports some serious attention. The company also announced a new multi-year partnership with Riot Games, which is the developer behind the highly popular League of Legends, a darling on the eSports stage, for both players and viewers.  

More specifically, Alienware elaborated that it will become the Official Competition PC and display partner for the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS), the League of Legends European Championship (LEC), as well as in four major international competitions: the Mid-Season Invitational, North America vs. Europe Rift Rivals, the All-Star Event, and the pinnacle of esports competitions, the League of Legends World Championship, which set new esports viewership records in 2018, with 99.6 million unique viewers watching the World Finals.