i39

Friday 30th April 2010: Multiplay has today revealed impressive attendance figures for its i39 non-stop four-day gaming event, with over 2,350 people gathering for the festival of gaming. From the far reaches of the UK and beyond, they came to check out the latest games and gadgets in the exhibition, enjoy a relaxing weekend of gaming, or even compete in tournaments which were worth in total an incredible £22,500.

"i39 was a resounding success with hundreds of people bringing their own PCs for four days of hardcore gaming and over 2,000 turning up to take part in competitions or watch the action," says Craig Fletcher, Managing Director, Multiplay. "Since the event, sales of tickets for i40, our summer tournament, have shot through the roof and it's now on track to break all records previously set by our 'I' series of events."

eSports veterans Team Dignitas were big winners at i39, triumphing in the first official Battlefield: Bad Company 2 LAN tournament and walking away with a share of the £2,500 prize pot. The eSports team also came first in the Call of Duty 4 and Team Fortress 2 tournaments, while TCM-Gaming took the Counter-Strike: Source crown and Unique-Esports proved victorious at Heroes of Newerth.

There have been 76,350 views of the finals, which were streamed live on Multiplay's website and a further 34,000 have since watched or downloaded the event videos via Fileplay.net.

Elsewhere, 300 gamers took a break to enter the Crucial Dodgeball challenge, with teams of five going head to head for a chance to win one of Crucial's donated prizes. Highlights can be viewed on YouTube: simply search for 'crucial dodgeball i39' for replays.

Exhibitors and supporters of i39 included 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 and refreshments were provided by Coca-Cola, Monster Energy and Papa Johns.

Multiplay's i40 takes place 27th-30th August during the Bank Holiday weekend. Over 1,300 "bring your own computer" tickets sold within seven days of going on sale, with gamers taking advantage of the 'early bird' 30 per cent off deal; Multiplay expects the 2,000 seats on offer to completely sell out in a matter of weeks and several thousand more day visitors to attend the festival.

Images of the event can be viewed in the i-Series picture gallery and there's also coverage on the IncGamers.com site.

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.