Melbourne esports club ORDER opens crowd funding campaign

GOT a spare $50? You could soon be the proud owner of a professional new Melbourne club which is taking on the world in Earth’s fastest-growing sport.

GAMING fans are being given the opportunity to own an esports club with Melbourne-based team ORDER today launching a crowd funding campaign.

In what is believed to be a world first for esports, everyday fans and investors are being given the opportunity to invest between $50 and $10,000 in the club.

The fastest growing sport in the world with a global audience of about 300 million people, some estimates put the worth of esports at as much as $1.5 billion last year.

While relatively new to Australia in a professional capacity, a YouGov survey last November found 15 per cent or almost four millions Australians had watched esports, with 57 per cent of those tuning in at least once a month.

ORDER has two teams of professional gamers, one playing League of Legends in the Oceanic Pro League and the second a Counter-Strike team which is set to compete in the WESG World Finals in Poland next month.

ORDER’s Counter Strike team competes at World Championship qualifiers. Picture: Supplied

ORDER owner Gerard Murphy — a co-founder of Leading Teams which works with AFL clubs — said the crowd funding exercise was all about getting more fans more engaged in the club.

“With my background I love team and I love community and that’s why I think it’s really important that if we can possibly give the gaming community particularly the opportunity to buy in and be a part of it, it’s really exciting,” Murphy said.

“It’s really unique but it’s also exciting because the esports industry is on the up. It’s a really good opportunity, I think, for the gaming community to get in early and be a part of it.

“We’ve spoken to our players and some people in the community and it’s been received really positively as a lead-in to the process so when it became legal about six weeks ago we said we’d see if the community wants it. It’s really up to the community. If there’s no response, so be it. We’re not doing it for investment, we’re doing it for more community engagement.”

Part of the funds will be used to build a planned new headquarters for the club — to be known as ‘House of ORDER’ — in the Melbourne CBD which would host a studio for tournaments and events, a bar, merchandise sales and ORDER officers.

ORDER’S equity crowd-funding campaign is one of the first in Australia since the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) issued crowdsourced equity funding licences in January 2018.

Expressions of interest open to the gaming community on Tuesday 20 February and to the

wider public on Tuesday 27 February 2018. To register go to www.birchal.com/company/order