Overtime acquires Evade’s Fortnite Team
Overtime, a sports network, which focuses on young, digital-native sports fans announced they have bought Fortnite esports team Evade for an undisclosed fee, in a bid to grow the company's fan base and its popularity.
Overtime's acquisition of a Fortnite team is the latest in a series of moves by the sports network, which aims to expand into gaming. The company's CEO Dan Porter talked about their latest move, stating the company has always been interested in gaming from day one.
"This move is about developing scale. We want to be the top gaming organization around content in the U.S. and globally," said Dan Porter.
Back in 2018, Overtime launched Team Overtime – its in-house esports team for Fortnite. Earlier in December, Overtime also unveiled the formation of Overtime2k, which consists of five content creators/streamers, who broadcast themselves playing NBA 2K in a bid to expand the organisation's influence and target NBA 2K fans all over the world.
Now, the company is taking a step further with the acquisition of Evade, thus forming Overtime Gaming. The newly announced project will also combine all the previous projects into one, meaning Team Overtime, Overtime 2K and Evade will cease to exist. Overtime Gaming is said to be run by former Evade owner Hantao Yuan.
Luke Scott, COO of Code Red, an esports consultancy and marketing agency talked about Overtime's acquisition of Evade, claiming it makes a lot of sense for them to make this step in a bid to expand further into the growing esports and gaming industry. That said, he noted that Overtime will struggle to make much noise in the competitive industry.
"It’s interesting by virtue of the fact that it’s Overtime," said Luke Scott.
"In following Overtime’s creation business model, Fortnite is the place for it to be because it has a much younger audience. Evade is quite a logical pick up for them in that respect."
The company acknowledged that performance and results are crucial, however, Overtime will rather focus on building stories around their players in a bid to draw in fans and individuals who will boost their viewership and popularity. Overtime took a similar approach on their platform with other high school stars who compete in "more traditional" sports.
As revealed by Overtime, they will focus on providing NBA 2K and Fortnite content for the foreseeable future, with a possibility of expanding into other titles later down the line.
Evade's Fortnite team has been formed in April 2019, when squad signed Azy "Shah" Shah, AddzZ and Niwra. Throughout the next couple of months, Evade saw a lot of roster swaps, leaving them with nine players on the roster at the time of team's disbandment. Joining Team Overtime will be Austin "Th3pacifist" Parker, Miles "Inspyre" JuddPorter, Jaron "Thresh" Reyes, Brian "Aircool" Stern, Julian "Crayola" Jimenez and Reckz.
The now-former Evade Fortnite squad has seen a fair amount of success throughout 2019, with their former member Coop finishing fifth at Contender Solo Cash Cup: Chapter 2 Season 1 – Week 5: NA-East, to which he also added a couple of top-25 finishes at Platform Solo Cash Cup.
