i39

Thursday, 1st April 2010: Multiplay has today announced EA and EA Store as sponsors of Europe's first Battlefield: Bad Company 2 LAN tournament, where entrants are in with a chance of walking away with a prize pot of £2,500.

There is now a total of up to £22,500 across five tournaments, which also include Counter-Strike: Source, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Team Fortress 2 and Heroes of Newerth, with prize pots varying between £5,000 and £6,250.

"We are delighted to announce that EA and EA Store are on board for 2010's i39 event," says Craig Fletcher, Managing Director, Multiplay, "Their sponsorship of the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 event has further bolstered our already impressive cash prize fund making it one of the most rewarding events in the gaming calendar."

Taking place over Easter weekend (2nd-5th April) at Newbury Racecourse, although competitive gaming is a key focus at i39, social activities are also highly prominent and there's something for gamers of all ages and abilities.

The Free To Play Gaming Area features top titles on PC, XBOX 360 and PS3 including Rock Band, DJ Hero and Battlefield: Bad Company 2, while throughout the weekend Wii Tournaments will be played on the main stage - Wii Sports, Rock Band and Dance Dance Revolution competitions abound!

Monster Energy's Monster Truck will be crammed with consoles and competitions throughout the weekend, with DiRT 2, Skate and Call of Duty all playable, and for those who want to stretch their legs Crucial Dodgeball is back by popular demand, with Crucial supplying an array of prizes for winning teams.

There's also a variety of challenges running between tournaments to find Multiplay's Ultimate Gamer (supported by EA), which sees hopeful gamers competing across all manner of genres to see who have the best overall gaming skills at the event.

Major sporting events will be screened throughout the weekend in the bar, which is where the annual i-Series Pub Quiz takes place and the entire event will be covered by BBC Radio 4.

Exhibitors and sponsors include Nintendo DSi XL, Ubisoft, EA, Microsoft, Mad Catz, Kustom PC, Crucial, Western Digital, Antec, Projector Games, Monster, Team Dignitas, Coolermasters, S2 Games, Logitech, ESET UK with refreshments to be provided by Coca-Cola, Monster Energy and Papa Johns.

Those who are not one of the 3,500 gamers lucky enough to be attending i39 will be able to watch live streams of the tournaments via the official website: http://iseries.multiplay.co.uk. In previous years upwards of 70,000 people tune in during the competition, and over 22,000 access videos after the events.

For those still interested in attending i39, the last few tickets still remain, ranging from £10 (day spectator) to £90 (weekend "Bring Your Own Computer/Console").

For more information, please contact Simon Byron, Ali Wood or Lauren Dillon at Premier PR ( firstname.surname@premierpr.com / 44 207 292 8330)

About Multiplay

Multiplay is a leading service provider to the games industry through events, server hosting, content delivery and consultancy. Multiplay online community is one of the largest in Europe. Multiplay gaming events annually attract over 15,000 gamers. These events are an ideal opportunity for publishers, developers, retailers and hardware manufacturers to showcase their latest products. Its events also play host to the finals of their online tournaments and the UK finals of the World Cyber Games. Multiplay is one of the world's largest hosts of online game servers, with multiple locations across the globe, providing specialist commercial hosting for PC and Consoles, including game servers and high availability websites. Multiplay has a proven track record with extensive hosting agreements with many publishers and developers.