The UAE team ‘Zoomers’ (comprising students from University of Birmingham, Curtin University Dubai, Abu Dhabi University and Heriot-Watt University) emerged victorious in VALORANT at the first Amazon UNIVERSITY Esports Masters MENA Series Grand Final, after a frenetic four-day event hosted by MENA Tech (a company of GGTech) in Abu Dhabi .
‘Zoomers’ beat ‘Team 2G’, comprising of Moroccan institutions such as Ibn Tofail University, Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah Univ., Ecole Marocaine des Sciences de l’Ingénieur (EMSI), and L’Office de la formation professionnelle et de la Promotion du Travail (OFPPT).
Considered as one of the top esports tournaments within the university ecosystem in Europe, the first edition of the Amazon UNIVERSITY Esports Masters MENA has shown a great level of rivalry among the different teams. The teams were not only competing for a share of a $10,000 prize pool but also representing their countries and universities in this international tournament, and wanted the prestige of being crowned as the first MENA university champions in League of Legends and VALORANT.
In VALORANT, after their great performance in the tournament, Hamdan ‘Shuriken’, from ‘Zoomers’, stated that “I feel honoured to be a part of the victorious team in Amazon UNIVERSITY Esports Master MENA champion. Competing internationally felt great, especially because I have shared the experience with my real-life friends. The setup and the organization was perfect, plus we played against really cool competitors. We had fun, it was like playing against your friends, so everything went smoothly.”
Being a participant among 40 other university students from 31 universities across the UAE, KSA, Egypt, and Morocco, has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the competitors.
Mario Pérez, CEO of MENA Tech, said “This first regional final is just the beginning of our commitment to help increase the esports space in the region and be an essential path for those students passionate about video games to develop their professional careers and personal skills. Our success is thanks to our partners, Riot Games and Amazon, who are helping us become a strong reference in the region.”
