The Virtual Athletics League (VAL) is a competitive esports organization that offers VR athletes (players like us!) and neighborhood VR arcades to take part in worldwide tournaments. The Virtual Athletics League has just celebrated their inaugural Beat Saber tournament on August 17th — a significant first for VR esports!

It’s no surprise that Beat Saber is majorly popular among VR gamers — it sold 100,000 copies in less than a month after its release and is gaining even more downloads. Shifting into esports was clearly the best and most obvious path to give practicing players and fans of the game a chance to show off their saber skills at their local neighborhood arcades.

The Virtual Athletics League Beat Saber tournament was originally projected to have only 50 VR arcades hosting. The worldwide league exceeded that estimate with over a hundred VR arcades signing up to host the competition and even more VR athletes picking up sabers and slaying neon blocks to some incredibly catchy and addictive EDM tunes.

About the League

Athletes that play in the league vie for high scores and prizes, push themselves physically, and come together as a virtual community to support their favorite games. Arcades hosting the tournaments are seeing more return visits from players and an increase of crowds. Most importantly, VAL is strengthening the already active Beat Saber community while also growing local and neighborhood VR communities.

Tournament Winner and Top Rankings

First place tournament winner, Krios, took home an HTC Vive and sliced his way to a combined score of 693,306 for his run through of “$100 Bills” and “Escape”. Congratulations, Krios!

Taking the #2 spot is Logan Theobald: 692,069, #3 Shaun “LiquidPZA” Pitz: 690,215, #4 Weaboo Jones: 688,452, #5 BennyDaBeast: 688,010, and coming in at #6 is Mattches: 686,576. Each top player received a $100 prize, which is fitting for the challenging song these virtual Jedi competed in called “$100 Bills”.

VR arcades that made the top rankings are VRKADE, StarcadeVR, Edge of Reality, VR Go!, iSimu VR, and Genesis VR. All other arcade rankings are posted on the Virtual Athletics League website, with a breakdown of individual song scores.

League Support

Watch Global Beat Saber Tournament from valvr_esports on www.twitch.tvThe tournament was hosted by VAL and VR arcades, but it was also backed by the mixed reality platform LIV (the company that mixes VR with reality in those cool Beat Saber videos), and the location-based game launching system SpringBoardVR. Thanks to the support of these companies global coverage of the game was made possible.

I wanna give a huge shout out of appreciation to the Virtual Athletics League and their support team for doing a great job at live streaming the tournament on Twitch. Live streaming is not only for watching the competition as it’s going down, posting it on Twitch gives viewers a chance to watch and rewatch the event. It also gives viewers an opportunity to learn how top players slice, dice, and maneuver.

Moving Forward

VAL has hosted Sprint Vector, Blasters of the Universe, and Space Pirate Trainer tournaments in the past and is expected to have more esports tournaments for Beat Saber in the future. Follow their social media pages and keep checking back to VR Fitness Insider for future Virtual Athletics League events.

Where to Find Virtual Athletics League

You can find Virtual Athletics League on their website, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook pages.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR