A web and cloud computing specialist from Gloucestershire has laid down £5,000 prize money - and use of its super-fast servers - for a forthcoming UK tournament for on-line gamers.

When esports fans and players descend on the epic26 CS:GO tournament next month it will be Fasthosts' Bare Metal Server servers hosting the all-important games - making them super-slick.

The firm has joined forces with epic.LAN, one of the UK's leading gaming and esports organisations, to sponsor the epic26 CS:GO tournament, and also dangled a cool £5,000 for the winning team.

Winners will also receive a 12-month match server hosted on Fasthosts' high-performance Bare Metal Server range, and managed by epic.LAN's game server control platform.

For the uninitiated, LAN refers local area network - and a LAN party or tournament being a gathering of people with compatible game consoles who get together using a router or switch.

epic.LAN hosts parties from 32 players up to 700 around the UK.

Simon Yeoman, Fasthosts chief executive, said: "When it comes to esports, gamers demand the very best tools to secure their victory.

"Whether that be their gaming rig, their keyboard and mouse, high refresh monitor and even their headset, nothing but the best will do. All the skills and training in the world won't help if you're using subpar equipment.

"The same is true of their match hosting, where milliseconds really can mean the difference between victory or defeat.

"Good luck to everyone who enters the tournament."

epic.LAN is a long-standing customer of Fasthosts, with the majority of its online infrastructure having been hosted with the Gloucester business since 2012.

The companies first worked together to deliver two huge Counter Strike: Source and Call of Duty 4 tournaments each with 128 teams taking part.

Jon Winkle, epic.LAN Managing Director said, "It's great to be working alongside the team to improve our online service quality but also to give something back to the CS:GO community who have supported epic.LAN in force over the past few years.

"Outside of our LAN events, we're currently working with several clients to deliver online projects utilising Fasthosts Bare Metal Servers and we've been seeing some amazing performance results which we will be sharing soon."

During epic26, epic.LAN will be showcasing the new Fasthosts Bare Metal Server range with online aspects of the event including external CS:GO TV relays and Twitch stream relays to show off their capabilities.

The Fasthosts team will also be sending along LAN survival packs for epic26 attendees to power the players as well as the infrastructure.

Its Bare Metal Servers are described as single-tenant servers with dedicated resources, on flexible pay-as-you-go pricing models.

The company is confident they deliver the best hosting performance available on the market, but with the added flexibility to scale up power on-demand as and when required, making them ideally suited to hosting competitive esports tournaments like epic.LAN.