Roland-Garros eSeries by BNP Paribas 2022: William Foster crowned

"I am extremely proud and happy. It was an honor to compete in the grand final inside Philippe- Chatrier court. The tournament was an incredible experience and I will never ever forget it,” said William Foster, 2022 Roland-Garros eSeries by BNP Paribas champion.

The Grand Final, which took place in a dedicated gaming area located at the top of the prestigious Court Philippe-Chatrier, saw eight finalists who qualified from one of four qualifying events compete against each other in a best-of-one, round-robin competition.

The finalists included representatives from five countries, including Great Britain, France, Colombia, Germany and Iran.

Following the conclusion of the round-robin tournament, the four best players progressed to the semi-final stages of the competition, where they played a best-of-three match.

Fozzy and Anteo then competed in the final, before being presented with the winner and runner-up trophies by Gilles Moretton, French Tennis Federation (FFT) President, and their prize money of €3,500 and €1,500 respectively.

Prior to the Grand Final, FFT hosted an esports workshop for the eight finalists. The workshop began with a cognitive test and physical training, hosted at HumanFab, an Innovation, Health & Sport Lab based in Paris.

This was followed by a welcome speech at Roland-Garros by Gilles Moretton, FFT President, and Vincent-Baptiste Closon, Global Head of Partnerships, Events and Sponsoring for BNP Paribas before finalists took part in a media training session led by journalist Barbara Klein.

To end the workshop, the eight finalists took part in a Tennis Clash training session, before playing a game of urban tennis at Roland-Garros.

Gilles Moretton, FFT President said: “Congratulations to William Foster for winning the 2022 Roland-Garros eSeries by BNP Paribas! We were amazed to see how tough the competition was this year and we even saw a record breaking number of participants enter the event from all over the world.

"In 2022, we made huge steps to make our competition more accessible to everyone, which included guaranteeing at least two women had the chance to compete in the Grand Final for the very first time through our collaboration with Women in Games.

"As the only Grand Slam to organise an eTennis tournament, we are honoured to fulfil our mission to promote tennis and eTennis worldwide. We are also proud to share this ambition with our partners BNP Paribas and Renault, and look forward to developing the event further in the future!”

The event was broadcast live on Twitch by popular streamer Rivenzi, who was accompanied by fellow French streaming compatriots LittleBigWhale and Ponce.

The show also saw special guests Alizé Cornet, the current number one female French tennis player and Jules Marie, a French professional tennis player and vlogger, join the stream for discussions about eTennis and their own careers.

The live stream achieved a peak viewership of 8.1K in total, while also achieving an average viewership of 5.3K during the three hour stream.

In 2022, the event saw BNP Paribas support as title partner for the fifth year in succession and also welcomed Renault as the new, official partner for the competition.

It also saw the introduction of a number of changes to the format of the tournament. This included hosting a female-only qualifier in partnership with Women in Games France and a switch to a mobile esports format by partnering with the world's most popular mobile tennis game, Tennis Clash, from Wildlife Studios.

It resulted in a record-breaking number of participants signing-up for the tournament, with 238K+ entrants from 207 territories around the world competing in the event and more than 1.66M+ matches being played.

Click here for more information about the Roland-Garros eSeries by BNP Paribas