Championship Gaming Series Appoints Commissioner

The Championship Gaming Series (CGS), the first global professional gaming league in history, has announced the appointment of Andy Reif as the new league commissioner. Reif will serve as chief executive and will oversee the establishment of the league and its development in North America, South America, UK/Europe and Asia/Australia. Reif joins CGS from the AVP Pro Beach Volleyball Tour, where he most recently served as chief operating officer.

“The opportunity to start a major sports league, with global television coverage in more than 100,000,000 homes through DIRECTV (North America and Latin America), BSkyB (UK), and STAR (Asia and Australia), has never happened before,” said Reif. “No other major sport started with such an arsenal of media. We have been assembling the very best talent from the gaming and broadcast worlds and CGS will change sports entertainment forever. We are going to provide an unparalleled entertainment experience to rival any other major sports league.”

“Our 2006 invitational events were a tremendous success,” said Eric Shanks, Executive Vice President of Entertainment at DIRECTV. “Now with the arrival of Andy, we’re ready to elevate pro gaming to the world stage. DIRECTV is committed to seeing that professional gaming has the best production team in the industry and we will be creating more than 30 hours of programming for the 2007 season in North America alone, which is an unprecedented level of coverage for the sport.”

Top pro gamers around the world have been waiting eagerly for the kickoff of league operations and the inaugural season, which will see a qualifying period followed by a draft. North America online qualifiers will soon be announced, as well as offline regional qualifiers in New York and Los Angeles.

Having run operations at the AVP since 2001, Reif has an established track record in delivering an incredible experience to fans and advertisers while working with an elite level of athletes. He has a strong track record in motion pictures and television, including senior positions with International Creative Management (ICM) and Paramount Pictures.