Someone once told me that it is strange to drink so much milk. It's cereal, coffee, protein powder, etc. It's not like I'm sitting at my desk playing XDefiant with a big glass of frothy milk. [But that's exactly what Big Milk wants: the “Gonna Need Milk” campaign by MilkPEP, the organization representing the “liquid milk industry” in the US, has been claiming for several years that milk is the “gamer's performance drink.”

I have never heard a gamer refer to milk as a “performance drink,” so I don't know if this campaign is effective yet, but something quite nice has come out of it: an American milk manufacturer is offering $250,000 in total prize money to girls funded “Milk Cup,” a Fortnite tournament. The final round of three qualifying rounds concluded this week, and a total of 33 teams will compete in this fall's LAN Championship event.

“The Milk Cup was designed specifically with the gaming community to address their needs,” says the Gonna Need Milk campaign. It “celebrates and empowers girls and women gamers while helping to level the playing field in professional gaming, especially the wage gap.”

The series is produced by Radiant in partnership with the Women of the eRena series, which is advised by esports competitor and streamer ThePeachCobbler. The $250,000 prize pool is “the largest women's esports prize pool in North America,” according to Milk (we couldn't find anything larger), and the first-place trio in this fall's championship event will win $75,000.

Actually, this is not the first time a sporting event has been called the “Milk Cup”; two soccer (football-like) tournaments have taken the name, both through dairy sponsorship, now called the SuperCupNI and EFL Cup The two are now called the “SuperCupNI” and the “EFL Cup. This Fortnite tournament is, as far as I know, the only event currently carrying on the “Milk Cup” tradition.

Details of the competition and various claims about the performance-enhancing effects of milk can be found on the Gonna Need Milk website.