IGN GROWS eSPORTS BUSINESS

David Ting promoted to lead competitive gaming division and create new businesses –

01/07/2011  — IGN Entertainment, the leading video games media company, today announced that it is creating an eSports group and has promoted David Ting to General Manager of eSports and Vice President of Research & Development, effective immediately.  In this new role, David will focus on being an entrepreneur, creating new businesses for the company.  The first business will be in competitive video gaming (“eSports”).

In his two-year tenure at IGN, David has been integral in rebuilding IGN’s technical infrastructure and driving some of the company’s most innovative technology and business projects, including the IGN Pro League (IPL), a gaming tournament created to help legitimize video gaming as a profession. Launched in April 2011 to much success, the IPL will kick-off its second season on July 14^th.

“The time has come for video games, as a spectator sport, to go mainstream in Europe and the United States as has happened elsewhere around the world,” said Roy Bahat, President of IGN Entertainment.  “David conceived this effort as a lean startup within IGN and has led it with vision and skill.  He is the perfect person to take it forward as we double down.”

“We created the IGN eSports initiative out of our passion as fans.  We want to make professional game play a joy to watch and a prestigious career.  We believe this can be big,” added David Ting.

“The time is ripe for eSports: the biggest game franchises are often more popular than other mass-market entertainment, and gamers are beginning to watch and learn from others.  IGN will respect that each game’s fans have their own passions and promote the new sport of competitive gaming to millions of game fans in IGN’s audience.”

About IGN Entertainment
IGN Entertainment is the leading Internet media and services provider focused on the video game and entertainment enthusiast markets.  Collectively, IGN’s properties reached more than 70 million unique users worldwide in February 2011, according to Internet audience measurement firm comScore.  IGN’s network of video game-related properties (IGN.com, 1UP.com, GameSpy, FilePlanet, TeamXbox and others) is the Web’s #1 video game information destination.  IGN also owns the world’s largest men’s lifestyle website, AskMen.com, and men’s entertainment site UGO.com. It also provides technology for online game play in video games. IGN is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, with offices across North America, Europe and Australia.