The 2019 SEA Games is undeniably approaching soon, with the official opening ceremony happening on 30 November in the Philippines. The biennial sports event also marks the first time for eSports to be included for the Games’ medal tally.
To recap, the upcoming SEA Games will feature games such as Dota 2, Starcraft II, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB), Arena of Valor, Tekken 7, and Hearthstone. Recently, Malaysia held a flag-off ceremony for our Malaysian SEA Games eSports athletes during LEVEL UP Play a few weeks ago.
The eSports segment will run for six days starting from 5 December until 10 December at the FilOil Flying V Centre in San Juan, Manila. You’ll find the eSports segment’s schedule for the 2019 SEA Games below for your planned viewings of the upcoming matches. Also keep note that the Philippines share the same GMT+8 timezone with Malaysia.
Interestingly, the StarCraft II competition features a double-elimination format, while other real-time strategy games in the 2019 SEA Games will run by traditional tournament format. Additionally, StarCraft II’s segment will only run on the event’s first and second day, with the Gold Medal match happening on the sixth day at 8:45am.
Another highlight as seen from the schedule is that the third day will only feature Dota 2 and Arena of Valor competitions which spans of up to 11 hours. The fifth day on 9 December can be considered to be the most exciting as it features Gold Medal matches for Dota 2, Hearthstone, and Arena of Valor on the same day. The Tekken 7 competition will only run on the last day of the 2019 SEA Games eSports segment, starting at 12:30 pm and to be concluded at 8pm.
Currently, we have reached out to eSports Malaysia (ESM) to find out if there will be a live telecast for the eSports segment of the 2019 SEA Games. However, ESM says that the official broadcast channels have not been announced for the time being. That said, we will be updating you as soon as when we obtain more information, so do stay tuned.
(Source: 2019 SEA Games)
