After UEFA ended its partnership with Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer, EA Sports were quick to grab licensing rights for the Champions League. While most of the players saw this as a cool addition to FIFA game series, EA Sports took it as an opportunity to forward FIFA esports scene even further and announced eChampions League.

Starting next year FIFA 19 players will be able to compete in a series of online qualifiers and a knockout tournament to select 8 finalists, who will travel to Madrid and compete in the finals scheduled on May 31st. It’s also worth mentioning that the tournament will be exclusive to PlayStation 4 players since Sony is one of the sponsors of the UEFA Champions League.

fifa 19 global series qualifiers

The FIFA 19 eChampions League will feature a prize pool of 280K dollars, with 100K going straight for the winner. This will be the second biggest prize pool in a FIFA 19 game competition next to eWorld Cup.

There’s a twist to the usual FIFA tournament rules, the finalists will have to create Ultimate Team squads, using a certain number of real-life players who played in the Champions League Group Stages this year.