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This month marks the 20th anniversary of ECV Esport!

As we look back over the past 20 years, we see many great milestones, which we would like to revisit with you as our crew and followers. We do this through daily throwbacks, a journey through time;

In 2004, founder Jim Lehmann started Team Visualize (TvL) to put competitive gaming on the map. At the time, these were competitions in games such as Counter Strike, Call of Duty 1 and soon to come 2. And many more..

This seemed a logical move after Jim was invited by teams for his skills and knowledge in FPS games to play in LAN competitions such as NetGamez.

So the first steps towards Esports Club Visualize were taken.

2005: the second year of Team Visualize was all about development and growth.

A second and third team emerged, expanding with games like Counter-Strike 1.6 and Call of Duty 2. These teams created the opportunities for deeper insights, which lead to further development of the teams and their tactics.

During this periode founder Jim ran an internship at a soccer club, where he developed a sport mentality of his own. Naturally, he used these learnings to support, coach and educate the teams, which became part of the team's mentality.

This sports mentality is deeply rooted in the DNA of the club we call ECV esports today.

While esports players and their teams were getting better and better at their games through tactics, a new website was being built at the same time. As the wireframe shows, the interface of a website consisted of elements that modern website approach very differently nowadays.

With a prominent logo and various image of the games, it revealed some initial branding that ECV esports used for years.

In 2007, we have published a gameplay video of our Counter-Strike source team. This team was active on different online competitions, such as clanbase and more. The increase of media coverage and Dutch participation grew towards the global tournaments.

Needless to say, our number of teams and divisions of games grew along with the scene. Wondering what games those were? See a list of the most popular games back then, played by our teams;

- Call of Duty 4, Call of Duty 2 - Counter-Strike Source, Counter-Strike 1.6 - DoTa (WC3-Mod) - Halo 3 - Starcraft Brood War - Counter-Strike 1.6 - Trackmania - Team Fortress 2 - Quake 4 - Wolvenstein Enemy Territory

One of our oldest pictures taken at a LAN event; in 2008 founder jimlehmannecv was coaching our Counter-Strike team. Amazingly we managed to take first place, competing against the other teams from the Benelux at FatLAN XI.

But wait, there's more...

This is also the year the top executive of ECV esports started developing the 'Verantwoord Gamen' method, translated to Responsible Gaming. This method provides tools to find a healthy balance of gaming and enough exercise. This is how we taught, and still teach, our esports players a responsible mindset for a harmonious esports career. This methods continued to develop through the years.

In 2009, we developed the ''Hero Program'', based on the Responsible Gaming method. The Hero Program, a hallmark of ECV esports, goes beyond gaming.

It's about holistic development - creating balanced, well-rounded individuals who are as impressive in life as they are in gaming. This program is our commitment to nurturing not just players, but true esports ambassadors. Rooted in our ethos since 2004, this initiative is designed to nurture not just skilled players, but true role models in the gaming community.

Since then we have been shaping the future of esports.

On the ECV Youtube channel you can find videos dating back to 2010! In that year we started making things like aftermovies and recaps of events we participated in. In this post you can see footage from the events DutchGameCon, The Party 8 and FOM 12.0.

Back then the channel was still called 'Visualize TV'. These short videos were a good way of letting our followers and sponsors know what we were up to. Nowadays we share these updates more frequently in the form of social media posts on Instagram, TikTok and, of course, our Discord channel!

2011 was the year we put ECV esports club on the map again with great wins and big projects! We made great strides and some valuable collaborations.

We finished in 1st place at the event FOM with Call Of Duty 4 and won with Counter-Strike at BGLAN.

We also organized the first Starcraft II competition in cooperation with broadcasting group BNNvara. And we spoke with esportbond about the future of esports in the Netherlands.

Our top FIFA player reached the top of the Netherlands in 2012! Our former ECV esporter IRokus played the finals at the NK Gaming and won the title of National Champion FIFA 2012!

In addition, our boys delivered some impressive performances at LAN event 'The Party 10'. There we got the first place with League of Legends, the second place with Shootmania and the third position with Call of Duty 4!

This footage from 2013 shows our players hauling in the trophies! At the 2013 NK Gaming, two ECV players played the final against each other. Champion Koen92 won from clubmate iRokus, who won the title of National Champion FIFA the year before!

Below that you can see footage of League of Legends at 'The Party 11' event. Our esporters played the final against club LowLandLions and won with a brilliant 2-0!

While ECV esports had some great titles to its name, we continued to grow and conquer.

- This year, the 15 year old esporter ECV Sjaak (wouterhonig) signed his contract to join ECV esports. The same year in which he made wonderful achievements playing StarCraft II, including placing in the Worldwide Top 16 at DreamHack 2014 and 3rd place at the event DSCL14. Several esports news channels managed to find him for some quick interviews, check them out on our YouTube channel.

- Furthermore, we became national champions in FIFA for the third time. ECV esporters IRokus (paskierokusjr) once again won the title. Also former champion Koentje92 (koenweijland) took the fourth place at Frag-o-matic.

- This year, our League of Legends team was the best throughout the Benelux. An astonishing first place in 1v1! And another great win later that year, as they reached third place in 5v5.

A great year with impressive performances, honourable participations and stronger teams than ever. As we were increasingly being seen by the world of esports, it was time for our players to get a new jersey to compete in.

The 2015 FIFA national champion Ali Riza 'Bruma' Aygün (aaygun96) and the CS:GO team on the road in the bus from pack4dreamhack; these were the first posts on our Instagram channel we established in 2015.

With this channel, we take you to all the events and moments we love to share with you since then. See it, believe it!

Our club ECV esports passed another milestone in 2016; Our player Aristote Ndunu (aristotendunu) became the first esporter in the world to sign a contract as an esporter with the national soccer club AZ (azalkmaar).

In the process, our ResponsibleGaming method developed in such a way that we managed to turn it into a foundation (verantwoordgamen). With this foundation, we still help young gamers every day, to game in a healthy and responsible environment.

Also, together with InWork B.V. (inwork_bv), we were the force behind a series of competitions at high schools. With the Fifa School Cup 2016 we came to different schools to talk here about our methods, impact as an esports club and of course to play a game of FIFA with the students.

2016 brought us many new collaborations, developments and projects to look back on with great pride.

It's incredible how many great steps ECV esports took in 2017. Our club gained great support, bringing with it a lot of influence and affiliates. Here are a few highlights of the year 2017:

- This year, we partnered up with Ajax Esports to help and coach the dutch FIFA player Dani Hagebeuk (danihagebeuk). This talent brought AJAX the title of national champion of the eDivisie, the official Dutch eSports competition for FIFA games (edivisie).

- The ECV esports team put on a new look. We revamped our logo and released new shirts and snapbacks for our members, fans and followers. Our players played in their slick outfits against their opponents.

- With the arrival of new games in recent years, new teams emerged. We welcomed new teams in Overwatch, HeartStone and StreetFighter and many more. These new teams brought new events to the horizon. The StreetFighter team took us to many competitions, including the RedBull Kumite event in Paris (where we got to snap the picture with Yoshi Onochin, the developer of SF5). In the meanwhile the players from HeartStone were getting ready to battle at DreamHack, Valencia and many battles after.

- This year we organized the biggest offline FIFA event in the Benelux, for the second time. in 2016, we started the tournament called "The FIFA School Cup" with inwork_bv. After our own Yori rose above 1100 participants that year and won the tournament, the event promised to be a huge spectacle again in 2017.

- The media knew to find us more often. Not only did we have a lot of reach on social media, but news outlets were happy to speak with us. Business News Radio (bnrnieuwsradio) invited our founder Jim (jimlehmannecv) to talk about the growth of esports in our country and ECV esports' role in it. In addition, Jeugdjournaal (nosjeugdjournaal, newschannel for the youth) came to us to speak with our esporters and cover the expanding value of esports.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of all the treasured moments from 2017, on to the jam-packed year of 2018!

2018: The year Stefano Pinna became the FIFA World Champion PS4 on behalf of ECV esports!

This beautiful victory adds to the list of victories this year:

- Dani Hagebeuk (danihagebeuk) won the FIFA eDivision, 2nd time in a row. This year we coached him for the 2nd year, prior to his esports career at ajaxesports. Dani is among the top 8 Xbox players in the world due to his performance at thw world championships 2018; - Team CS:GO won the tournament at MyDomainMasters; - Bram (Bramvandriessen_ won first edition of RedBull Strijders FightClub; - Aristote (aristotendunu) defended his title and won his 2nd FIFA eDivisie Cup; - Our new Destiny 2 team finished in first place at the Battle of the Clans: Destiny 2: Forsaken, the launch event of the new Destiny 2: Forsaken game mode.

Nonetheless it was the year Fortnite made its debut at ECV esports. With many applications to visit our selection days, we managed to build a strong team of young motivated players. We trained these new esporters every week from our magnificent skybox in the AZ stadium (azalkmaar), where we trained physically too, as part of our Responsible Gaming method (verantwoordgamen).

We upscaled the amount of trainings and bootcamps for our esporters. By continuing to practice with each other and sharing new tactics and strategies, the bond of the team strengthens and that resulted in great achievements across the club.

Besides these great accomplishments, we organized the successful third edition of the Fifa School Cup, in which more than 1100 students participated.

All in all, 2018 was a brilliant year for our club.

2019: the year our community grew bigger as we reached 10k followers on Instagram!

With this broad audience we decided to share our knowledge to let our community not only see what we can do, but to teach them and become better with us. Weekly our Fortnite manager Lars (Cazorla_YT) shared his Fortnite tips and later on FIFA hero Renzo (roemrawsingh94) showed us some pro-moves too! Of course ECV's YouTube channel got some updates too. ECV esporters like aristotendunu hit the road and brought our viewers along in Esporters Op Pad (Esporters on the Road), where we discussed different aspects of esport with people through the whole country.

After our multiple successful trainingcourses, we trained a few more of our FIFA Esporters to play at footballclubs. This resulted in our Esporters Glas (Jasonglasfifa) and Greenhopper (greenhopper_) playing at Fortuna Sittard (fortunasittardesports) and Renzo (roemrawsingh94) to manage a place at Vitesse (vitesse_esports).

Another year means another shot at some big competitions. Our mission was to show what we got, as Renzo and Dani (danihagebeuk) were included in the top 16 Xbox Players (due to the FIFA19 rankings) and stood face-to-face in the qualification bracket to get themselves a spot in the FIFA eNations Cup in London! Renzo was also a fierce contestant at the eDivision, where he fought for the win in the Finale. Upcoming talents Glas and Greenhopper shared a beautiful 4th place.

Together with Esports Game Arena, a location for esports and its community, we took some great steps in the esports industry of our nation. We organized the Fortnite Invitational Event for our community and fans with a prize pool of $50,000!

At this same event location we climbed back in the CS-saddle for the international Counter Strike: Global Offensive City League (cityleague.gg). It's been a while since we participated in a CS league, so we created a new team which even brought the victory home!

2020: We kicked the year off with some healthy resolutions!

Following up to the tips and tricks we have been sharing on the ECV esports instgram channel, we started giving masterclasses for our community. As we started with the FIFA Esports classes, the tickets were selling out immediately. Just like the Fortnite Recruitment days as many talents showed us what they got, aiming for a spot in the ECV Fortnite team.

Of course it was the year of the global pandemic too, which caused for a lot of esports competitions to be held online. Even with the new way things were being done, our ECV talent Glas (jasonglasx) managed to win the online eDivision Open finale!

To keep our homebased community engaged during the lockdown, we organised an online tournament ourselves: the ECV FIFA Team Battle! In this tournament each ECV Esporter became Team Captain of their own team with 2 other players of choice. It was a huge succes with some nervewrecking games and exciting rankings.

As soon as we were able to meet each other IRL again, the teams were headed for the bootcamp at Novotel Hotel in The Hague (novoteldenhaagworldforum). One week of training our skills ingame and physically, as well, according to the Verantwoord Gamen method and coaching by habfit_official. By training this we helped our esporters to stay in balance and continue their ways to new heights and new titles.

We ended this year playing the Winter Games, organized by esportsnederland1 and esportsgamearena. Our teams participated in various games including FIFA, Rocket League, Rainbow 6 and a lot more.

Disclaimer: Throughout the year of 2020 we proceeded within the the Covid19 measures according to RIVM regulations.

In 2021 we trained our FIFA team with some new players en extended our partnership with Fortunasittardesports and esportsnec, to offer our team a spot in their esports team.

In the meanwhile our Fortnite team grew stronger and gained some Good Vibes with the return of the Vibe King carzola_yt! Not only did he strengthen our Fortnite team, as he created a lot of content for our YouTube channel, like reviews of sponored products and commentaries on the performances of our players!

This year the ECV Homebase moved to a new location, where we would have the space for all of our trainings, bootcamps. Together with contentpowerhouse we moved into an astonishing villa where we could practice all of our esports activities.

2022: With our 2 biggest games of that year, FIFA and Fortnite, our players reached the top multiple times! FIFA esporter Damian (damesheet), who this same year became eDivisie Rookie of The Season, finished second place at the eDivisie and qualified for the FIFA eWorld Cup in Kopenhagen! After exciting matches he made sure to place # 32 in the World!

And esporter Dennis (dennisvanbeek_), trained by ECV and playing for scheereveenofficial, kicked it far in the eDivisie competition by reaching the finals! All things considered it made for a beautiful season for ECV esports!

The Fortnite team played some great tournaments too! For example, our esporter ECV Flodax showed us what he got en finished 7th place in the Duo Cash Cup Finals and in 11th place in the Solo Cash Cup Finals! With these results he qualified for the Fortnite Champion Series where he reached #24th of Europe. (fortnitechampseries)

Apart from these amazing results, we had a lot of fun once again by making sponsored content on Instagram and YouTube. After his comeback, vibeking cazorla_yt promoted the logitechg headphones by completing the 18-hour challenge without taking them off even for a second!

2023: the ECV brand got a new look! We decided it was time to freshen up the brand's looks again, but didn't want to neglect the logo that we've been cherishing since the beginning of our esports club. So, a new pallet and some visual brand elements helped us renewing our looks!

Not only did the brand renew, as we signed some new Fortnite players too! New talents Yoyo, Ricy, Larcco and Jurdy joined the Fortnite roster. Together with the other ECV Fortnite players, we got together for a Fortnite Bootcamp including excersize, according to the Verantwoord Gamen Method!

As in the past years our Verantwoord Gamen Method (Responsible Gaming Method) has developed as its own foundation, we were part of the initiative Digitaal Jongerencentrum Nederland (DJC, Digital Youth Centre, Netherlands). With a platform like DJC we are helping the local youth to connect with each other, or to find help and services from the assigned youth organizations. Additionally the founder of ECV esports and Stichting Verantwoord Gamen (Foundation Responsible Gaming) jimlehmannecv visited multiple high schools through the Netherlands, to talk to them about the importance of balance and health in regular gaming, as in the world of esports as well.

Yet we made another beautiful partnership this year. We partnered up with student association U-Pad Gaming, where students and their peers can share their passion for gaming. We procvided some education in responsible gaming habits and we gained the chance to even recruit some new ECV talents from the association.

And this year too, our succes was going global! As our Fortnite talent ECV Jurdy played among 99 other esporters, he managed to reach the Top 15 as the best Dutch participant, bringing home £1600! Later that year, ECV Yoyo rocked the SpillExpo Oslo Fortnite Invitationals with his duo, which earned him 440 euros of prize money!

Today we are celebrating the 20th Anniversary Day of ECV esports! As we counted down to today with daily throwbacks of previous years, we got together to play some classic ECV games with old and new ECV esporters, supporters and managers! Stay tuned!

Celebrating 20 years of ECV esports!

On Anniversary day, September 21st, we got together to celebrate 20 years of ECV esports! We welcomed our community for a bite and a drink, and of course to play some classic games from our roster, like Counter-Strike and Fortnite.

We went live on Twitch, battled for nice prizes powered by veidecnederland and we discussed some new communities, yet to be announced.

A few snapshots of Community Day last Saturday, celebrating the 20th Anniversary of ECV esports!

We got together with our community to celebrate and play some classic games from our roster, like sim racing, Counter-Strike and Fortnite and many more.

Photos by quende_2112