Bengaluru-based gaming startup EWar Games has announced the launch of Free Fire Premiere League (FPL) in India. The Garena Free Fire tournament has over 50,000 participants from six different states of India including Karnataka, Delhi, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Telangana, and Maharashtra.

The esports tournament started on March 5 and it will continue till March 20. There’s a prize pool of ₹1.5 lakh wherein the winner, 1st runners-up and 2nd runners-up will win cash prizes of ₹1 lakh, 30,000 and 10,000, respectively. There’s also a ‘Best Underdog Team’ award which includes a prize money of ₹10,000.

The FPL will have different stages starting with around nine matches being played on a daily basis. It will move on to have 45 qualifiers’ matches with 540 teams, 18 quarter-final matches with 90 teams, and 16 semi-final matches with 24 teams. Some of the popular Free Fire teams that are participating include Total Gaming, TSG, Lokesh Gamer, Nonstop Gaming, Nayeem Aalam, Villian Gaming, Techno Banda, Enigma Gaming and Jigs Official.

There’s also going to be an IPL-like auction for the top 12 ‘invited teams’ where six franchise/state owners will participate in a virtual-wallet-based auction. Each owner will have the option of buying/owning two teams, and these teams will go on to represent their respective state and battle against the underdog teams. Nimish Raut, Fnatic India Head & Delhi owner and Rushindra Sinha, Founder of Global Esports & Maharashtra owner are among some of the state owners taking part in this virtual bid.