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It is 2022 and there’s a new esport on the rise. Microsoft’s spreadsheet program – Excel – is now a full-fledged esport with entertaining matches and everyone in the community is going crazy about it. Yes, you read that right! It would never cross your mind to pick Excel and its monotonous spreadsheets as an esport but the genius lies in it. The Financial Modeling World Cup (FMWC) has been around since 2020 and the esport has a big following. ESPN broadcasted some of the “seldom seen sports” on ESPN2 live on 5th August and Excel Esports: All-Star Battle was a part of the lineup. Social media is all over this unconventional esport and folks are truly loving every bit of it. Clips from the tournament along with the commentators have taken over Twitter.
Who were the Excel pros who took part in Excel Esports: All-Star Battle?
The FMWC regularly hosts international competitions, both invitational and open tournaments, wherein Excel pros strive to solve as many questions as possible for a complex task. The Excel Esports: All-Star Battle featured two FMWC winners, a runner-up, alongside highly ranked competitors and was initially streamed in May but ESPN telecasted it this weekend. The following are the Excel pros who took part in the Excel Esports: All-Star Battle:
Joseph Lau - Season 2020 winner
Diarmuid Early - Season 2021 winner
Anup Agarwal - Season 2021 runner-up
Andrew Ngai - FMWC Open winner, #3 in the world rankings
Michael Jarman - FMWC Open runner-up, #4 in the world rankings
Gabriela Strój - Battle of 16 runner-up, #16 in the world rankings, the top-ranked woman in financial modeling
David Brown - FM Grand Master, Global Excel Summit Battle winner, #18 in the rankings
Jeff Heng Siang Tan - Second highest FMWC Rating, #4 in Season 2021
The Excel Esports tournament fields the best against the best. The eight Excel experts tried to solve original tasks about lottery answers, with the goal to answer as many questions as possible within a stipulated time.
The story behind the ESPN8: The Ocho channel is also quite interesting. The channel is fictional and ESPN2 is renamed ESPN8 every year, referencing a joke made in the 2004 movie Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, where the game finds a home on the fictional “ESPN8: The Ocho” channel.
Excel Esports tournaments: All you need to know
According to the FMWC, participants will be given instructions, rules for the game, and questions to answer at an increasing level of difficulty. Each game will be for 30 minutes and participants can use any function and strategy to solve the problem. The right answers will move them up in the brackets.
If you are someone that truly enjoys using functions like “VLOOKUP”, “HLOOKUP”, “COUNTIF”, and “SUMIF” and want to show off your problem-solving skills, you will be happy to learn that the next Excel Esports tournament is being held in the month of October with the FMWC Open. You can check out the official website to glance at the rules and sign up for the open qualifiers.
Funnily, Excel Esports (XL) is a UK-based organization that fields teams in League of Legends, Valorant, FIFA, and Fortnite. On 9th August, Microsoft UK tagged the organization in its tweet and XL had a hilarious response to it.
It would not be surprising if Excel Esports (the spreadsheet program) takes over the Twitch meta soon and we all flock to see these world-class financial modelers solve intricate problems on stream. Spreadsheets and Twitch chat in one place? That could be truly entertaining.
