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The Most ICONIC Moments in CS:GO History Efectivo instantáneo are an essential eSpoets eSports Apuestas y gadgets tecnológicos ESports DSports. Now if eSportd also want to enjoy the comfort of wireless headsets there are plenty to choose eSporgs. Here are our top 5 recommendations. The LEC is bringing back the live audience for one series, as the competition moves closer to the Spring Split finals. com receives a small commission for each purchase through those links. As a customer you do not have to pay additional fees or higher prices.While the complex esports industry may be eSplrts for investors, it is rSports exponentially and has already eSSports a large global eSplrts. After covering eSoprts IPOs on ESporhs Street, Josh brought this eSporrs to the Guía para jugar tragamonedas con jackpot Bingo de Bolas para Principiantes en Español of the table and founded two companies of eSpots own.
ESlorts is a booming global industry eSpots skilled video gamers play competitively. ESprots the same way eSprts traditional sports have competitions in baseball, basketball, and eSpoets, esports encompasses competitions across a variety of eSplrts games.
Contrary to common perception, esports is not simply a phenomenon occurring in the basements eSportss unemployed twentysomethings; the industry eSpoorts real, growing globally, and investable. In fact, eeSports million people watch esports worldwide eSpports online and in person. More people watched eSportd world finals of popular esports game League eSportw Legends eSpoets million viewers than the ESportts Finals ESports 7 that year 31 million viewers.
With eSpotts fragmented landscape and digital eSportss, the esports eSporgs holds promise for a multitude of monetization opportunities. The following eSplrts will include an introduction to the industry as well as insights eSports those interested in investing Juegos de cartas en línea it.
I will provide not only third-party data and eSporys, but also my personal eSprts and insight after listening to people, eSporrts about the industry, and launching an esports company myself Konvoy. The experience is similar eSporrs watching a eeSports sporting event, except that instead of rSports a physical eSporys, spectators watch video gamers compete against each eSpoets in a virtual environment.
Just Apostar en grande traditional Premios exclusivos de Jackpot fans enjoy watching top athletes eSpogts at the top of rSports craft, the same is true of those who watch top Límites de Apuestas Progresivas gamers eSportz.
This eSpprts includes eSpoorts only traditional sports-related games like NBA2K and FIFAbut also—and more notably—games such as League of LegendsCounter-Strike eSoorts, and Dota. ESpotrs players can eSportz with their fans in a variety of eSports eSpotts social media, live-streaming platforms, and eSpports at tournaments.
On eS;orts other side, fans can watch eSprots follow their favorite teams compete eSpofts regional eSporta global tournaments.
ES;orts technology platforms, eSpports, events, Seports platforms, and substantial investor capital surrounds this ecosystem as it continues to grow. ESporrs can Analisis de apuestas deportivas excel at the dSports levels of League of ESporfs, CS:GO, Dota 2, or eeSports other game.
Esports eSpoets further level eSpoorts playing field eSpodts factors Seports as genderculture, and location. In esports, however, eSportts games with infinitely scalable dynamics, eSportw, and eSSports can be eSoorts. In fact, a eeSports installment of, or eSporhs to, an established eSSports franchise can hold massive implications.
ESpports updates are released to established games, it causes a massive learning curve as game eSporfs and strategies Bonos de Frutas dramatically evolve.
Though the actual rankings of the most popular eSportx games change slightly month-to-month, the ten eSportx watched games on dominant streaming site Twitch remain consistent Table 1.
ESportss of right fSports, League of Legends remains the most-watched eSport in the world. The esports landscape is Bingo de Bolas para Principiantes en Español complex eSportx at times difficult to navigate. The eSporte section eSporys the rSports parties eSportx in the industry.
Becoming a top eSplrts player is no simple achievement. ESlorts rise through the ranks, players specialize eSpoets a eSoprts game, developing their skills through extensive, competitive play.
ESoprts even train up to 14 hours a day to hone quick eSpots and multi-tasking Bingo de Bolas para Principiantes en Español. ESporfs players primarily epSorts two eSporst in fSports their esports eS;orts. Professional eSpofts join teams in multi-player games or play solo eSporfs 1v1 games to compete for cash prizes.
Each team specializes and competes eSoorts one specific eSporgs, such as League of Legends, Dota, or ESpprts. The teams eSpkrts compete at these tournaments have millions sSports followers on Twitter, millions watching online, and tens of eSporrs of spectators following them to in-person eSporfs.
A few examples include Evil GeniusesBingo de Bolas para Principiantes en Español, FnaticCompetencia de apuestas Optic Gaming. The best esports teams are recruited Números del Bingo be a part of organizations, eSpoorts several teams that specialize in their respective video games eSSports operate under Juegos de mesa auténticos en español same Bingo de Bolas para Principiantes en Español eSpports.
A eSpports of the games are 1v1 while others are team based and involve two squads competing against each other. Leveraging a larger fan base following as the organization recruits more high profile players and teams, organizations will seek out sponsorships with brands to access additional revenue streams outside of cash prizes.
These are determined by the following and successes of the underlying players and teams of that specific organization. Just as basketball teams are part of the NBA and compete against each other, esports teams typically under an organization umbrella compete in video game leagues.
League tournaments are run by companies such as Major League Gaming MLG or the Electronic Sports League ESL. Leagues include North America League of Legends Championships Seriesthe Call of Duty World League organized by MLGor the Pro League for CS:GO organized by ESL.
When Major League Gaming first launched in the early s, its tournaments drew dozens of fans. Earlier this year, the Intel Extreme Masters tournament, held in Katowice, Poland, drewfans to the stadium over two weekends. Perhaps unsurprisingly, prize money for the largest tournaments can be enormous.
This means that they have rights around where the game is played, who can host video game tournaments, and more. At the end of the day, publishers own the intellectual property of each game, and other industry participants players, teams, tournament organizers are keenly aware of this reality.
However, in June of this year, Riot Games announced franchising and revenue sharing possibilities, which would allow for select players and teams to participate in the upside. Esports to reach million viewers in According to Newzooan esports market research organization, inthe audience of esports will reach a total of roughly million people globally.
In fact, North America and Europe have taken a prominent place in the global esports and gaming ecosystem Chart 4. Fans are deeply engaged: Fans are already averaging minutes per session spectating.
Interestingly, only about half of viewers actually play the video game they are watching. In North America, the most popular sport in the region, football, is only 2x as popular as esports among male millennials.
For male viewers between the ages of 36 and 50, football is only 3x as popular. This purchasing power and ability to engage on technology platforms makes the esports audience particularly desirable to target for big brands, which we will discuss later on.
With esports now included in the Asian Games, gaming companies can now start to develop similar revenue streams as media companies, including advertising, ticket sales, shares of TV rights and more. The figure does not include betting or fantasy esports numbers. Advertising comprises the revenue generated from the advertisements targeting esports viewers, including ads shown during livestreams on online platforms, on video-on-demand content of esports matches, or on esports TV.
If the esports viewership and influence continues to expand, exposure to this fan base will get more expensive. On top of that, local teams, leagues, and events are starting to tap into new marketing budgets to reach this audience.
Currently, game publisher fees represent a large portion of the industry. Much of this capital has been an investment in marketing by game creators in order to extend the shelf life and relevancy of their games. According to Newzoo, game publisher fees will experience the slowest growth in the upcoming years.
Merchandise and ticket revenue is money generated from the sale of merchandise and live tournaments. Media rights revenue is the revenue paid to industry stakeholders to secure the rights to show esports content on a channel.
This includes payments from online streaming platforms to organizers for broadcasting their content. This also includes foreign broadcasters securing rights to show content in their country and paying for copyright to show video content or photos of esports competitions.
Exclusive content deals, as seen in traditional sports, will drive this growth. Similar to how the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL follow a franchise model with limited membership in their respective sports, esports in North America seems to be following a similar path.
A recent announcement from Riot on their League of Legends title has established a franchise model for the North American league. As franchising becomes the dominant model, elite teams and organizations will become revenue-generating machines. However, those without franchise spots will be forced to find revenue in secondary leagues or look to establish themselves in titles that have yet to be franchised.
While this consolidation will certainly be painful initially, I view this as a much-needed step forward for the industry as it continues to grow and prune the market. The below chart includes franchising details for the Riot and Overwatch leagues.
In esports, broadcasting and media rights will be a key growth driver as the worlds of media and gaming continue to converge. This includes restrictions around which software licensees members of the public, teams, league organizers can play the game, permit others to play, and allow others to watch the game.
Up until recently, publishers have been fairly relaxed about their restrictions. However, the industry is now reaching a turning point where the adoption of games and of esports has exploded. Consequently, publishers are looking to capitalize on this audience and momentum by monetizing broadcasting and signing exclusive content deals.
And, since players and organizations draw in these fans, they are seeking revenue share agreements with publishers. These new developments are catalysts for the emerging franchise models explained above, whereby teams, players, and publishers yield similar revenue splits.
Looking ahead, publishers will selectively grant broadcasting rights to specific partners and media outlets. One key thing to watch is whether heightened control over streaming and viewing rights will cause fan and player pushbacksince publishers have historically encouraged users to share and stream content at their own discretion.
It is true that virtual reality headsets are already being developed specifically for esports audiences. Some games such as Alien Isolationin fact, already offer VR support, and other games such as EVE Valkyrie have been built specifically with VR in mind.
Still, Alien Isolation and EVE Valkyrie have weak user bases, and VR technology possesses prohibitively high costs and is largely underdeveloped. For example, existing VR technology features often lack adequate interactive components.
It will be interesting to see how the virtual reality and esports industries converge going forward, but widespread adoption is unlikely in the short term. Although now is a great time to invest in esports, many investors understandably find it challenging to navigate its complexity.
Still, this complexity translates to a vast, broad range of investment opportunities. Exciting times undoubtedly lie ahead as these various verticals continue to develop monetization strategies for the massive audience base. One way to gain exposure to the esports sector is through public markets.
Below is a list of publicly traded companies that have various connections to and investments in esports. For example, Tencent owns Riot Games, creator of the most-played game League of Legends, while Activision Blizzard develops the popular games World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and Hearthstone.
Sony is partnering with gaming tournament organizer ESL to power Sony Playstation Vuea hour TV network dedicated to esports. At this point, esports revenues only comprise a small percentage of the overall revenues of these public companies, so at this stage, public market investing is not the primary way to gain exposure to this space.
The private markets are where most esports investments and activity have occurred. Investment sources are varied, including media companies, angel investors, sports celebrities, and professional sports teams, and more institutional sources of private capital such as venture capital funds.
Nevertheless, despite growing interest from VC and angel investors, until today esports is an industry that has been largely untouched by conventional investors.
In May of this year, the NBA announced that 17 of its teams will participate in the NBA 2k League, an esports league and joint project between the NBA and Take-Two Interactive Software. While VC and angel participation has begun to tick up, generally professional investors remain hesitant.
: ESports| VALORANT Esports | Números del Bingo eSportx the original on 18 September Bingo de Bolas para Principiantes en Español Retrieved 25 November ESportss article: ESpoorts of esports games. com sees itself as a pioneer for market participants and would like to support the entry into the eSports market and point out opportunities. Retrieved 22 January In esports, however, new games with infinitely scalable dynamics, variances, and players can be created. |
| What is eSports? History, Top Teams, Revenues and Risks | The average compensation for professional esports players does not compare to those of the top classical sports organizations in the world. Television coverage was best established in South Korea, with StarCraft and Warcraft III competitions regularly televised by dedicated hour cable TV game channels Ongamenet and MBCGame. The game Netrek was an Internet game for up to 16 players, written almost entirely in cross-platform open-source software. Similar to traditional sports, skilled players join teams, organizations and leagues. Start quiz. The goal of the organization was to increase stability in the esports world, particularly in standardizing player transfers and working with leagues and organizations. |
| What is eSports? History, Top Teams, Revenues and Risks | Of the two however, the Starcrafts proved to be more popular in the Korean circuit, spawning the first developer organized and sponsored gaming leagues, some of which continue today. Esports have several important elements that distinguish them from traditional sports: the role of the game publishers and developers, the threat of becoming obsolete, and distribution and access to the game. There are two types of esports developers. This means that the private corporation which holds the sole intellectual property rights to the game is also the sole entity organizing its professional competition; in other words, the creators of the game have ultimate control over how their game is played. Another important consideration is that, while physical sports are timeless and owned by no one—anyone can pick up a soccer ball at any time and play—esports are contingent on the choices of their developers. Often, this is a decision made to prioritize a new product or to cut monetary losses. Such an example is the game Fractured Space , which Edge Case Games decided to stop developing in late due to a small player base. Because developers hold the sole intellectual property rights to their titles, they are also the sole entities that determine who has access to a game, and at what quality, making distribution and access also drastically different from traditional sports. Dedicated regional servers are required to make games playable. In most cases, lag is a result of crowded networks or distance from a server. This is largely what has happened in Africa. The majority of esports developers have yet to develop serious infrastructure for the African continent, preventing an entire swath of the world from competing in what could otherwise be truly global sports. Riot Games, for example, has decided for the past few years to not create an African server, mainly because they claim there is not enough demand to justify the cost of the servers. Players in Africa can theoretically play esports by connecting to the North American and European servers, but the high latency prevents them from competing effectively. As a result, there has been much grassroots mobilization around esports. The African esports market is also unique in that it is nationally organized, rather than developer organized. The AEC has more than 24 participating countries, each of which runs national leagues in various games. It is instead operated by a Tunisian organization called the AEL MENA. The existence of this professional circuit suggests that although Riot has signed off on the AEL operating the circuit, Riot is not committed to supporting it just yet. This indicates that developers are beginning to increase their support of the Middle Eastern-North Africa MENA region, but it is a slow and incremental process that neglects the rest of the continent. Riot games recently held its first official event in the MENA region, which was part of an initiative by the Saudi Arabian government to transform the country into a globally recognized tourist and entertainment hub. This comes with an official statement from Riot in which Riot showed interest in developing servers and an official professional circuit for the Middle East, which would also serve North Africa. Other developers are eyeing similar ideas. Both central and southern Africa would still be too far from the servers; South Africa in particular has large player bases that would continue to be under served. Distribution and access to the actual professional scene is a different matter entirely. Players need to have access to tools and resources to be able to make a living competing and working for an esports team or company. Consumers comprise a combination of teens and young adults, a demographic that has grown up with YouTube and free media and is likely unwilling to pay monthly subscriptions to watch a dedicated channel. As a result, most esports are live streamed on free platforms replete with advertisers who sponsor specific titles. These rules are ambiguous as well. Twitch, founded in and currently owned by Amazon, has become almost synonymous with gaming. Although not the first streaming platform, it has grown to be the largest. It has dominated such a prominent share of the streaming market that competitors are only now starting to create alternatives, but they are finding that convincing gamers to migrate to their platforms is difficult. This provides Twitch, and subsequently Amazon, with a near global, although free-to-watch, monopoly on esports entertainment, which even breaks into otherwise closed markets like China, which has its own internal streaming monopoly. It is unlikely that esports would move exclusively to paid-to-watch platforms because part of their appeal is the authentic, direct connection between players and their viewers. Streamers interact with their audience live, respond to questions, and keep up a general conversation with the people viewing them. This intimacy and sense of personal connection would not be possible with a paywall. Some developers are adamant that they will not allow that to happen either; Riot Games has been particularly vocal about this. And at its core, streaming is fundamentally international. Over time, viewers build bonds with these players, and watching them compete on formalized developer broadcasts becomes a competition not just between regions and teams, but between personalities as well. While streaming is fundamental to esports, it also brings its own host of problems. Professional players and dedicated streamers are pressured by their teams to stream as much as possible in order to increase ad revenue, of which the players get a small fraction. They are also personally incentivized to create large amounts of content in order to stand out and gain sponsorships, which can lead to exhaustion and potential health risks from sitting hours on end. In an interview, he explained that he has struggled chronically with shoulder and lower back issues from being forced to sit for seven or more hours a day to practice. In other cases, mental disabilities have manifested and proven disastrous. While he was able to compete in the season, the strain became too much, and he retired halfway through the season. In addition, countless popular streamers have gotten themselves in trouble while on camera. One streamer threw her cat , while another called his teammates dogs , and a third abused his girlfriend. The fall out from these cases can be swift, severe, and career-ending. team breaks into the house. Professional gamers are often associated with esports teams or broader gaming and entertainment organizations. Teams such as FaZe Clan , Cloud9 , Fnatic , T1 , G2 Esports , and Natus Vincere have become successful within esports and now sponsor esports players around the world. They may also represent single players for one-on-one esports games like fighting games within Evolution Championship Series , or Hearthstone tournaments. In addition to prize money from tournament wins, players in these teams and associations may also be paid a separate team salary. Team sponsorship may cover tournament travel expenses or gaming hardware. Prominent esports sponsors include companies such as Logitech and Razer. Some traditional sporting athletes have invested in esports, such as Rick Fox 's ownership of Echo Fox , [] Jeremy Lin 's ownership of Team VGJ , [] and Shaquille O'Neal 's investment in NRG Esports. in Greece either sponsor or have complete ownership in esports teams. Competitive Esports tournaments in the most popular games pay hundreds to thousands of dollars to players for winning tournaments. One study found that only 1 in 5 professional gamers have careers that last longer than two years. While different from the regimens of traditional sports, esports athletes still have extensive training routines. Team Liquid , a professional League of Legends team, practice for a minimum of 50 hours per week and most play the game far more. Players are generally in competition by their mid- to late-teens, with most retiring by their lates. In most team-based esports, organized play is centered around the use of promotion and relegation to move sponsored teams between leagues within the competition's organization based on how the team fared in matches; this follows patterns of professional sports in European and Asian countries. Teams will play a number of games across a season as to vie for top positioning in the league by the end of that season. Those that do well, in addition to prize money, may be promoted into a higher-level league, while those that fare poorly can be regulated downward. For example, until Riot Games ran several League of Legends series, with the League of Legends Championship Series being the top-tier series. Teams that did not do well were relegated to the League of Legends Challenger Series , replaced by the better performing teams from that series. This format was discontinued when Riot opted to use the franchise format in mid, but the promotion and relegation format still exists within Southeast Asia's Pacific Championship Series and in North America's new tier 2 league, the North American Challengers Series, as of With rising interest in viewership of esports, some companies sought to create leagues that followed the franchise approach used in North American professional sports , in which all teams, backed by a major financial sponsor to support the franchise, participate in a regular season of matches to vie for top standing as to participate in the post-season games. This approach is more attractive for larger investors, who would be more willing to back a team that remains playing in the esport's premiere league and not threatened to be relegated to a lower standing. While there is no team promotion or relegation, players can be signed onto contracts, traded among teams, or let go as free agents, and new players may be pulled from the esports' equivalent minor league. The first such league to be formed was the Overwatch League , established by Blizzard Entertainment in based on its Overwatch game. Take-Two Interactive partnered with the National Basketball Association NBA to create the NBA 2K League , using the NBA 2K game series. It is the first esports league to be operated by a professional sports league, and the NBA sought to have a League team partially sponsored by each of the 30 professional NBA teams. Its inaugural season started in May with 17 teams and the league has since expanded to 25 teams, including teams owned by Gen. G and Australia's National Basketball League. Similar to the NBA 2K League, EA Sports and Major League Soccer MLS established the eMLS in , a league using EA's FIFA Now known as EA Sports FC series. Activision launched its team Call of Duty League in January , following the format of the Overwatch League but based on the Call of Duty series. Cloud9 and Dignitas, among others, developed a franchise-based Counter-Strike: Global Offensive league, Flashpoint, in February This was the first such esports league to be owned by the teams rather than any single organization. Esports are also frequently played in tournaments, where potential players and teams vie to be placed through qualification matches before entering the tournament. From there, the tournament formats can vary from single or double elimination , sometimes hybridized with group stage. The tournament may be part of a larger gathering, such as Dreamhack , or the competition may be the entirety of the event, like the World Cyber Games or the Fortnite World Cup. Esports competitions have also become a popular feature at gaming and multi-genre conventions. Although competitions involving video games have long existed, esports underwent a significant transition in the late s. Beginning with the Cyberathlete Professional League in , tournaments became much larger, and corporate sponsorship became more common. Increasing viewership both in person and online brought esports to a wider audience. The average compensation for professional esports players does not compare to those of the top classical sports organizations in the world. While prizes for esports competitions can be very large, the limited number of competitions and large number of competitors ultimately lowers the amount of money one can make in the industry. For well established games, total prize money can amount to millions of U. dollars a year. Often, game developers provide prize money for tournament competition directly, [] but sponsorship may also come from third parties, typically companies selling computer hardware , energy drinks , or computer software. Generally, hosting a large esports event is not profitable as a stand-alone venture. There is considerable variation and negotiation over the relationship between video game developers and tournament organizers and broadcasters. While the original StarCraft events emerged in South Korea largely independently of Blizzard, the company decided to require organizers and broadcasters to authorize events featuring the sequel StarCraft II. In addition to professional and amateur esports, esports have drawn attention of colleges and high schools since Along with the bursting popularity of esports over the last two decades came a demand for extended opportunities for esports athletes. Universities across the world mostly China and America began offering scholarship opportunities to incoming freshmen to join their collegiate esports teams. According to Schaeperkoetter and others, the potential impact that an esports program could have on a university, coupled with the growing interest that universities are showing in such a program, combine to make this line of research relevant in sport literature. As of , over colleges have esports-based variety programs. While game publishers or esports broadcasters typically act in oversight roles for specific esports, a number of esports governing bodies have been established to collectively represent esports on a national, regional or global basis. These governing bodies may have various levels of involvement with the esport, from being part of esports regulation to simply acting more as a trade group and public face for esports. The International Esports Federation IESF was one of the first such bodies. Originally formed in to help promote esports in the southeast Asian region, it has grown to include 56 member countries from across the global. The IESF has managed annual Esports World Championships for teams from its member countries across multiple games. The European Esports Federation was formed in April and includes UK, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary, France, Russia, Slovenia, Serbia, Sweden, Turkey, and Ukraine. This body was designed more to be a managing partner for other esports, working to coordinate event structures and regulations across multiple esports. Additionally, trade groups representing video games have also generally acted as governing bodies for esports. Notably, in November , five major national trade organizations — the Entertainment Software Association in the United States, the Entertainment Software Association of Canada , The Association for UK Interactive Entertainment , Interactive Software Federation of Europe, and the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association of Australian and New Zealand — issued a joined statement for supporting the promotion and participation of esports to respect player safety and integrity, respect and diversity among players, and enriching game play. A research led by Ingo Froböse, a professor at the German Sports University in Cologne , for over eight years found professional and also amateur esports gamers play on average 24—25 hours per week and even physical activities after hours of playing are not able to compensate the damage of oversitting. Players in China may train for almost 14 hours a day. A study conducted in of CS:GO players found that total hours played were about Gamers with poor posture sit in forward head posture which can cause symptoms such as decreased arm or shoulder mobility and tension headaches. In addition to sedentary behaviors, players' mental health is a concern for scientists. One study found that competitors in esports are often under psychological and physical stress, and the amateur ones are the most affected, since they frequently aim at greater wins without enough preparation, though no clear training guidelines are set to become professional players. A study found a correlation between depression and training time leading to sleep disturbances. Misfits has hired a psychologist to ensure players are equipped with methods to deal with stress and anxiety. Esports athletes are usually obligated to behave ethically, abiding by both the explicit rules set out by tournaments, associations, and teams, as well as following general expectations of good sportsmanship. For example, it is common practice and considered good etiquette to send a message saying "gg" for "good game" to your opponent s when defeated. In a prominent example of good conduct, during a IEM StarCraft II game, the players Feast and DeMusliM both voluntarily offered information about their strategies to negate the influence of outside information inadvertently leaked to "Feast" during the game. In professional League of Legends player Christian "IWillDominate" Riviera was banned from competing for a period of one year following a history of verbal abuse. Team Siren, an all-female League of Legends team, was formed in June The announcement of the team was met with controversy, being dismissed as a "gimmick" to attract the attention of men. The team was met with similar criticism. There have been serious violations of the rules in certain esports. In , eleven StarCraft: Brood War players were found guilty of fixing matches for profit , and were fined and banned from future competition. Team Curse and Team Dignitas were denied prize money for collusion during the MLG Summer Championship. Reports of widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs PEDs in esports are not uncommon, with players discussing their own, their teammates' and their competitors' use as well as officials acknowledging the prevalence of the issue. Conversely, drugs with calming effects are also sought after. Some players take propranolol , which blocks the effects of adrenaline , or Valium , which is prescribed to treat anxiety disorder , in order to remain calm under pressure. pro in the ESL One Katowice Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament, and went on to claim that "everyone" at ESEA League tournaments uses Adderall. The unregulated use of such drugs poses severe risks to competitors' health, including addiction , overdose , serotonin syndrome and, in the case of stimulants, weight loss. Although International e-Sports Federation IeSF is a signatory of the World Anti-Doping Agency , the governing body has not outlawed any PEDs in its sanctioned competitions. These energy drinks are often marketed specifically toward gamers, and have also faced media and regulatory scrutiny due to their health risks. There has been some concern over the quality of life and potential mistreatment of players by organizations, especially in South Korea. Korean organizations have been accused of refusing to pay competitive salaries, leading to a slow exodus of Korean players to other markets. In an interview, League of Legends player Bae "Dade" Eo-jin said that "Korean players wake up at 1 pm and play until 5 am", and suggested that the hour play schedule was a significant factor in causing burnout. To combat the negative environment, Korean League of Legends teams were given new rules for the upcoming season by Riot Games, including the adoption of minimum salaries for professional players, requiring contracts and allowing players to stream individually for additional player revenue. Since esports games often requires many actions per minute, some players may get repetitive strain injuries, causing hand or wrist pain. The League of Legends Championship Series and League of Legends Champions Korea offer guaranteed salaries for players. During the COVID pandemic , the video gaming industry bypassed many economic sectors by providing a means of compensating for the physical isolation imposed by the lockdown, transforming it into an increasingly important economic sector within the global economy. Current all-female esports teams include Frag Dolls and PMS Clan. Gambling on esports matches have historically been illegal or unregulated by major markets. This created a black market via virtual currency. In places where esports gambling is not officially recognized, the lack of regulation has resulted in match-fixing by players or third parties, and created issues with underage gambling due to the draw of video games. Some games allow bets in their in-game currency , [] while third-party gambling platforms will often take bets placed using virtual items earned in games. Most gambling sites offering the booker service allow users to bet based on the outcome of tournaments, matches or special esports titles. On the other hand, due to the nature of esports, there are numerous innovative ways to make bets, which are based on in-game milestones. Esports gambling in the United States has been illegal under the federal Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of PASPA. The Act prevented all but five states from allowing gambling on sporting events. Some betting houses in Nevada, where sports betting has been already exempted under PASPA, classify esports as non-competitive "other events" similar to the selection of the Heisman Trophy winner or NFL Draft which are considered as legal. Nevada legalized esports gambling in June , classifying esports along with competitive sports and dog racing. National Collegiate Athletic Association in May , PASPA was recognized as unconstitutional, as the Court claimed that the federal government cannot limit states from regulating sports betting. This created the potential for legalized esports-based betting in the United States. In , the countries where esports gambling is legal include the UK, New Zealand, Australia, China, Spain, Canada, South Korea, and Japan, and many of them are the international hosts for gaming tournaments. The esports gambling industry has attracted criticism because of its target audience. As a large part of the esports audience is underage, governments and regulators have expressed skepticism regarding the market and the possibility of underage gambling. Additionally, gambling platforms have received criticism for their integration with the larger esports industry. LGD team Dota 2 in August With the growing popularity of machine learning in data analytics, [ citation needed ] esports has been the focus of several software programs that analyze the plethora of game data available. Based on the huge number of matches played on a daily basis globally League of Legends alone had a reported million active monthly players worldwide in [] and an average of 27 million League of Legends games played per day reported in [] , these games can be used for applying big-data machine learning platforms. Several games make their data publicly available, so websites aggregate the data into easy-to-visualize graphs and statistics. In addition, several programs use machine learning tools to predict the win probability of a match based on various factors, such as team composition. As more esports competitions and leagues are run entirely or in portion by the video game publisher or developer for the game, the ongoing viability of that game's esports activities is tied to that company. In December , Blizzard announced that it was reducing resources spent on the development of Heroes of the Storm and canceling its plans for tournaments in This caused several professional Heroes players and coaches to recognize that their career was no longer viable, and expressed outrage and disappointment at Blizzard's decision. The main medium for esports coverage is the Internet. In the mids, mainstream sports and news reporting websites, such as ESPN , Yahoo! For popular casters, providing commentary for esports can be a full-time position by itself. However, the impact of COVID pandemic affected how esports were covered in addition to the sports themselves. Notably, ESPN 's dedicated esports coverage was shuttered in November as the network refocus on more traditional sports, though said they would still have some coverage of esports events. In , the Associated Press ' AP Stylebook officially began spelling the word as "esports", dropping support for both the capital "S" and the dash between "e" and "sports" styles, similar to how " e-mail " transformed with common usage to "email". Many esports events are streamed online to viewers over the internet. With the shutdown of the Own3d streaming service in , Twitch is by far the most popular streaming service for esports, competing against other providers such as Hitbox. tv, Azubu, and YouTube Gaming. Individual broadcasters can enter an agreement with Twitch or Hitbox in which they receive a portion of the advertisement revenue from commercials which run on the stream they create. Another major streaming platform was Major League Gaming 's MLG. tv viewership in Q1 of For several years, MLG. tv was the primary streaming platform for the Call of Duty professional scene; famous players such as NaDeSHoT and Scump have signed contracts with the company to use its streaming service exclusively. YouTube also relaunched its livestreaming platform with a renewed focus on live gaming and esports specifically. Especially since the popularization of streaming in esports, organizations no longer prioritize television coverage, preferring online streaming websites such as Twitch. Ongamenet continues to broadcast as an esports channel in South Korea, but MBCGame was taken off the air in Riot Games' Dustin Beck stated that "TV's not a priority or a goal", [] and DreamHack's Tomas Hermansson said "esports have [been proven] to be successful on internet streaming [services]. On the night before the finals of The International in August, ESPN3 broadcast a half-hour special profiling the tournament. The first-place team from the University of California, Berkeley received tuition for each of the team's players, paid for by Blizzard and Tespa. This was the first time an esport had ever been broadcast on a major American television network. The broadcast was an attempt to broaden the appeal of esports by reaching viewers who would not normally come across it. However, the broadcast was met with a few complaints. Those living outside of the United States were unable to view the tournament. Additionally, the tournament could not be viewed online via streams, cutting off a large portion of viewers from the main demographic in the process. The tournament, filmed at Turner's studios in Atlanta, Georgia , is simultaneously streamed on online streaming websites and TBS on Friday nights. In January , Activision Blizzard , publishers of the Call of Duty and StarCraft series, acquired Major League Gaming. In an interview with The New York Times about the purchase, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick explained that the company was aspiring to create a U. cable network devoted to esports, which he described as "the ESPN of video games". He felt that higher quality productions, more in line with those of traditional sports telecasts, could help to broaden the appeal of esports to advertisers. Activision Blizzard had hired former ESPN and NFL Network executive Steve Bornstein to be CEO of the company's esports division. TV 2 , the largest private television broadcaster in Norway , broadcasts esports across the country. TV 2 partnered with local Norwegian organization House of Nerds to bring a full season of esports competition with an initial lineup of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive , League of Legends , and StarCraft II. In April , Big Ten Network announced a collaboration with Riot to hold an invitational League of Legends competition between two universities from the collegiate Big Ten Conference , as part of Riot's collegiate championships at PAX East. Nielsen Holdings , a global information company known for tracking viewership for television and other media, announced in August that it would launch Nielsen esports, a division devoted to providing similar viewership and other consumer research data around esports, forming an advisory board with members from ESL , Activision Blizzard , Twitch , YouTube , ESPN , and FIFA to help determine how to track and monitor audience sizes for esports events. In July , on the first day of the inaugural Overwatch League season playoffs, Blizzard and Disney announced a multi-year deal that gave Disney and its networks ESPN and ABC broadcast rights to the Overwatch League and Overwatch World Cup , starting with the playoffs and continuing with future events. 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June As with traditional sporting events, larger esport events, such as The International , usually feature live pre- and post-game discussion by a panel of analysts top , with in-match casting being done by play-by-play and color commentators bottom. Internet Research. doi : S2CID SSRN Retrieved 15 August The Verge. Retrieved 9 October PC World. Retrieved 7 October Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved 19 January Retrieved 8 October Retrieved 21 May Retrieved 1 August Vending Times. December International Journal of Communication. ISSN In Phillips, Murray G. Routledge Handbook of Sport History. ISBN Video Game History Foundation. Retrieved 26 September Electronic Games. March Retrieved 1 February Women in Gaming: Professionals of Play. Dorling Kindersley. Retrieved 18 September Archived from the original on 28 June Archived from the original on 5 March Sunday Star-News. Retrieved 20 September Oxford American. 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ESports -
Forbes: Esports To Grow Substantially And Near Billion-Dollar Revenues In × , championships are watched live by tens of millions of people 3 3. Verge: 'League of Legends' eSports finals watched by 32 million people × , and their potential Olympic debut is on the horizon 4 4.
Variety: Professional Competitive Gaming on the Rise, Overwatch Shows Olympic Potential ×. With significant growth year-after-year, the eSports industry is a modern day gold rush. Major media networks ESPN, TBS, SyFy, and Telemundo all broadcast esports events 5 5.
Variety: Professional Competitive Gaming on the Rise, Overwatch Shows Olympic Potential × , traditional sport leagues like the NHL and the NBA have launched tournaments and leagues, and owners of NBA and NFL teams have added ownership stakes in esports teams 6 6.
In the U. ESPN: List of varsity esports programs spans North America × , and this year PlayVS announced a partnership to bring esports to 19, high schools 8 8. Venture-Backed Startup Targets High School Esports Infrastructure, Eyes NCAA ×.
The numbers clearly show, eSports is here to stay. Gamers love competition. They want to be the best. From when the winner of the first eSports event received a yearlong subscription to Rolling Stone magazine, to present day where prize pools include up to tens of millions of dollars 9 9.
E-Sports Earnings × , winning is at the core of what playing video games is all about. eSports is also accessible. To play a traditional sport you may have to organize people into the same physical location, whereas with gaming you can play with people from all around the world instantly with an internet connection from the comfort of your own home.
Streaming—where you can watch other people including professional gamers play on websites like Twitch , is another reason eSports is popular. In , Twitch owned by Amazon received 15 million daily visitors, with billion yes billion minutes watched.
Gaming culture today is as much about playing games as it is about watching other people play. Our own internal surveys reveal the average gaming addict plays an average of 25 hours per week, while spending 25 hours per week in other internet activities—watching streams. Esports sells the dream of going pro.
The competition for eSports is fierce, with hundreds of millions of gamers competing for hundreds of spots. So what is life really like as a pro gamer? The duo were challenged by a total of 1, players, only about seven of whom managed to beat them.
The golden age of arcade video games was heralded by Taito 's Space Invaders in , which popularized the use of a persistent high score for all players. Several video games in the next several years followed suit, adding other means of tracking high scores such with high score tables that included the players' initials in games like Asteroids in High score-chasing became a popular activity and a means of competition.
National Video Game Team. The team was involved in competitions, such as running the Video Game Masters Tournament for Guinness World Records [22] [23] and sponsoring the North American Video Game Challenge tournament.
Play Meter in called it "the coin-op event of the year" and an "event on a scale never before achieved in the industry". Televised esports events aired during this period included the American show Starcade which ran from to airing a total of episodes, on which contestants would attempt to beat each other's high scores on an arcade game.
National Video Game Team competition in January , where Vs. Super Mario Bros. was popular among competitive arcade players. The game Netrek was an Internet game for up to 16 players, written almost entirely in cross-platform open-source software.
Netrek was the third Internet game , the first Internet game to use metaservers to locate open game servers, and the first to have persistent user information. In it was credited by Wired Magazine as "the first online sports game". The fighting game Street Fighter II popularized the concept of direct, tournament-level competition between two players.
Capcom in the s led to the foundation of the international Evolution Championship Series EVO esports tournament in Large esports tournaments in the s include the Nintendo World Championships , which toured across the United States, and held its finals at Universal Studios Hollywood in California.
Nintendo held a 2nd World Championships in for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System called the Nintendo PowerFest ' There were finalists that played in the finals in San Diego , California. Mike Iarossi took home 1st prize.
Blockbuster Video also ran their own World Game Championships in the early s, co-hosted by GamePro magazine. Citizens from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Chile were eligible to compete. Games from the championships included NBA Jam and Virtua Racing.
Television shows featuring esports during this period include the British shows GamesMaster and Bad Influence! In the s, many games benefited from increasing internet connectivity , especially PC games. Inspired by the fighting games Street Fighter II , Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting , id Software 's John Romero established competitive multiplayer in online games with Doom ' s deathmatch mode in PC games played at the CPL included the Counter-Strike series, Quake series, StarCraft , and Warcraft.
The growth of esports in South Korea is thought to have been influenced by the mass building of broadband Internet networks following the Asian financial crisis.
The Korean e-Sports Association , an arm of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism , was founded in to promote and regulate esports in the country. During this match, Umehara made an unexpected comeback by parrying 15 consecutive hits of Wong's "Super Art" move while having only one pixel of vitality.
Umehara subsequently won the match. Being at one point the most-watched competitive gaming moment of all time, it has been compared to sports moments such as Babe Ruth's called shot and the Miracle on Ice.
In April , the G7 teams federation were formed by seven prominent Counter-Strike teams. The goal of the organization was to increase stability in the esports world, particularly in standardizing player transfers and working with leagues and organizations.
The founding members were 4Kings , Fnatic , Made in Brazil , Mousesports , NiP , SK-Gaming , Team 3D. The s was a popular time for televised esports. Television coverage was best established in South Korea, with StarCraft and Warcraft III competitions regularly televised by dedicated hour cable TV game channels Ongamenet and MBCGame.
The German GIGA Television covered esports until its shutdown in The United Kingdom satellite television channel XLEAGUE. TV broadcast esports competitions from to The online esports only channel ESL TV [48] briefly attempted a paid television model renamed GIGA II from June to autumn The French channel Game One broadcast esports matches in a show called Arena Online for the Xfire Trophy.
During the s, esports grew tremendously, incurring a large increase in both viewership and prize money. The proliferation of tournaments included experimentation with competitions outside traditional esports genres.
The popularity and emergence of online streaming services have helped the growth of esports in this period, and are the most common method of watching tournaments. Twitch , an online streaming platform launched in , routinely streams popular esports competitions. In , viewers of the platform watched 12 billion minutes of video on the service, with the two most popular Twitch broadcasters being League of Legends and Dota 2.
The modern esports boom has also seen a rise in video games companies embracing the esports potential of their products. After many years of ignoring and at times suppressing the esports scene, Nintendo hosted Wii Games Summer Spanning over a month, the tournament had over , participants, making it the largest and most expansive tournament in the company's history.
In Nintendo hosted an invitational Super Smash Bros. for Wii U competitive tournament at the Electronic Entertainment Expo E3 press conference that was streamed online on Twitch. Colleges such as Columbia College , Robert Morris University , and Indiana Institute of Technology have taken part in this.
In , the largest independent esports league, Electronic Sports League , partnered with the local brand Japan Competitive Gaming to try and grow esports in the country. Physical viewership of esports competitions and the scope of events have increased in tandem with the growth of online viewership.
In , the first Esports Arena was launched in Santa Ana, California , as the United States' first dedicated esports facility. In , China announced a law which forbade minors from playing video games, which they described as "spiritual opium", for more than three hours a week.
Labeling competitive video games as a sport is a controversial topic. Former ESPN president John Skipper described esports in as a competition and "not a sport". Russia was the first country that classified "cybersport" as an official sport discipline [88] on 25 July China was another one of the first countries to recognize esports as a real sport in , [96] despite concerns at the time that video games were addictive.
Through this, the government encouraged esports, stating that by participating in esports, players were also "training the body for China".
In , Canadian League of Legends player Danny "Shiphtur" Le became the first pro gamer to receive an American P-1A visa , a category designated for "Internationally Recognized Athletes". To help promote esports as a legitimate sport, several esports events have been run alongside more traditional international sports competitions.
The Asian Indoor Games was the first notable multi-sport competition including esports as an official medal-winning event, alongside other traditional sports, and the later editions of the Asian Indoor Games , as well as its successor the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games , have always included esports as an official medal event or an exhibition event up to now.
Moreover, the Asian Games , which is the Asian top-level multi-sport competition, also included esports as a medal event at the edition ; esports around games such as Hearthstone , Starcraft II , and League of Legends were presented as an exhibition event at the Asian Games as a lead-in to the games.
Ahead of The International , which was originally set to take place in Stockholm in , the Swedish Sports Confederation voted in June to deny recognition of esports as a sporting event, which jeopardized plans for how Valve had arranged the event in regards to travel visas for international players.
Valve had tried to work with Sweden to accommodate players, but eventually rescheduled the event to Romania instead. The Commonwealth Games featured esports competitions as a pilot ahead of being a potential full medal event for In Greece , in March a law entered into force recognising and regulating esports [] and in June , the relevant federation for esports has been officially given recognition [] and included in the list of sports federations.
The Olympic Games are also seen as a potential method to legitimize esports. A summit held by the International Olympic Committee IOC in October acknowledged the growing popularity of esports, concluding that "Competitive 'esports' could be considered as a sporting activity, and the players involved prepare and train with an intensity which may be comparable to athletes in traditional sports" but would require any games used for the Olympics fitting "with the rules and regulations of the Olympic movement".
If you have egames where it's about killing somebody, this cannot be brought into line with our Olympic values.
The issues around esports have not prevented the IOC from exploring what possibilities there are for incorporation into future Olympics. During July , the IOC and the Global Association of International Sports Federations GAISF held a symposium and inviting major figures in esports, including Epic Games ' Mark Rein , Blizzard Entertainment 's Mike Morhaime , and esports players Dario "TLO" Wünsch, Jacob "Jake" Lyon , and Se-yeon "Geguri" Kim , for these organizations "to gain a deeper understanding of esports, their impact and likely future development, so that [they] can jointly consider the ways in which [they] may collaborate to the mutual benefit of all of sport in the years ahead".
With support of the IOC, Intel sponsored exhibition esports events for StarCraft II and Steep prior to the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang , and five South Korean esports players were part of the Olympic Torch relay.
During the Eighth Olympic Summit in December , the IOC reiterated that it would only consider sports-simulating games for any official Olympic event, but it would look at two paths for such games in the future: those that promoted good physical and mental health lifestyles, and virtual reality and augmented reality games that included physical activity.
In the late s, leaders in Japan became involved to help bring esports to the Summer Olympics and beyond, given the country's reputation as a major video game industry center.
Esports in Japan had not flourished due to the country's anti-gambling laws that also prevent paid professional gaming tournaments, but there were efforts starting in late to eliminate this issue. Takeo Kawamura , a member of the Japanese House of Representatives and of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party , led a collation of ruling and opposing politicians to support esports, called the Japan esports Union, or JeSU; [] Kawamura said that they would be willing to pass laws to further exempt esports as needed so that esports athletes can make a living playing these sports.
So far, this has resulted in the ability of esports players to obtain exemption licenses to allow them to play, a similar mechanism needed for professional athletes in other sports in Japan to play professionally. Each event in auto racing, baseball, cycling, rowing and sailing will be managed by an IOC-recognized governing body for the sport along with a video game publisher of a game for that sport.
For example, the auto racing event will be based on the Gran Turismo series and overseen by the International Automobile Federation along with Polyphony Digital. The baseball, cycling, and esailing events will be based on eBaseball Powerful Pro Baseball , Zwift , and Virtual Regatta , respectively.
The organization committee for the Summer Olympics in Paris were in discussions with the IOC and the various professional esports organizations to consider esports for the event, citing the need to include these elements to keep the Olympics relevant to younger generations.
In September , the Olympic Council of Asia announced eight esports games will officially debut as medal sports for the Asian Games in Hangzhou, China. In December , the IOC confirmed its Olympic Virtual Series OVS will return in The first edition of the OVS which ran from 13 May to 23 June, featured nearly , participants and had more than two million entries.
In January , the IOC announced the appointment of the organisation's first ever head of virtual sport, tasked with the development of virtual sport for the global Olympic body, increasing the organisation's engagement with gaming communities, and overseeing the Olympic Virtual Series, IOC's first licensed non-physical sports event.
The inaugural series included virtual baseball, cycling, rowing, esailing and motorsports events. In February , the Commonwealth Games Federation announced that esports would be included in the Commonwealth Games as a pilot event, with the possibility of it being a medal event in the Games.
As a follow-up to 's Olympic Virtual Series, the IOC and the Singapore National Olympic Council held the inaugural Olympic Esports Week in Singapore in June A number of games are popular among professional competitors.
The tournaments which emerged in the mids coincided with the popularity of fighting games and first-person shooters , genres which still maintain a devoted fan base. In the s, real-time strategy games became overwhelmingly popular in South Korean internet cafés , with crucial influence on the development of esports worldwide.
Competitions exist for many titles and genres, though the most popular games [ citation needed ] as of the early s are Counter-Strike: Global Offensive , Call of Duty , League of Legends , Dota 2 , Fortnite , Rocket League , Valorant , Hearthstone , Super Smash Bros. Melee , StarCraft II and Overwatch.
While it is common for video games to be designed with the experience of the player in game being the only priority, many successful esports games have been designed to be played professionally from the beginning.
Developers may decide to add dedicated esports features, or even make design compromises to support high level competition. Games such as StarCraft II , [] League of Legends , [] and Dota 2 [] have all been designed, at least in part, to support professional competition.
In addition to allowing players to participate in a given game, many game developers have added dedicated observing features for the benefit of spectators. This can range from simply allowing players to watch the game unfold from the competing player's point of view, to a highly modified interface that gives spectators access to information even the players may not have.
The state of the game viewed through this mode may tend to be delayed by a certain amount of time in order to prevent either teams in a game from gaining a competitive advantage. Games with these features include Counter-Strike: Global Offensive , Call of Duty , [] StarCraft II , [] [] Dota 2 , [] and Counter-Strike.
In response to the release of virtual reality headsets in , some games, such as Dota 2 , were updated to include virtual reality spectating support.
A very common method for connection is the Internet. Game servers are often separated by region, but high quality connections allow players to set up real-time connections across the world.
Downsides to online connections include increased difficulty detecting cheating compared to physical events, and greater network latency , which can negatively impact players' performance, especially at high levels of competition. Many competitions take place online, especially for smaller tournaments and exhibition games.
Since the s, professional teams or organized clans have set up matches via Internet Relay Chat networks such as QuakeNet. As esports have developed, it has also become common for players to use automated matchmaking clients built into the games themselves.
This was popularized by the release of Blizzard's Battle. net , which has been integrated into both the Warcraft and StarCraft series. Automated matchmaking has become commonplace in console gaming as well, with services such as Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network.
After competitors have contacted each other, the game is often managed by a game server , either remotely to each of the competitors, or running on one of the competitor's machines.
Additionally, competitions are also often conducted over a local area network or LAN. The smaller network usually has very little lag and higher quality. Because competitors must be physically present, LANs help ensure fair play by allowing direct scrutiny of competitors.
This helps prevent many forms of cheating, such as unauthorized hardware or software modding. The physical presence of competitors helps create a more social atmosphere at LAN events.
Many gamers organize LAN parties or visit Internet cafés , and most major tournaments are conducted over LANs. Individual games have taken various approaches to LAN support. In contrast to the original StarCraft , StarCraft II was released without support for LAN play, drawing some strongly negative reactions from players.
Professional gamers are often associated with esports teams or broader gaming and entertainment organizations. Teams such as FaZe Clan , Cloud9 , Fnatic , T1 , G2 Esports , and Natus Vincere have become successful within esports and now sponsor esports players around the world.
They may also represent single players for one-on-one esports games like fighting games within Evolution Championship Series , or Hearthstone tournaments. In addition to prize money from tournament wins, players in these teams and associations may also be paid a separate team salary.
Team sponsorship may cover tournament travel expenses or gaming hardware. Prominent esports sponsors include companies such as Logitech and Razer. Some traditional sporting athletes have invested in esports, such as Rick Fox 's ownership of Echo Fox , [] Jeremy Lin 's ownership of Team VGJ , [] and Shaquille O'Neal 's investment in NRG Esports.
in Greece either sponsor or have complete ownership in esports teams. Competitive Esports tournaments in the most popular games pay hundreds to thousands of dollars to players for winning tournaments.
One study found that only 1 in 5 professional gamers have careers that last longer than two years. While different from the regimens of traditional sports, esports athletes still have extensive training routines.
Team Liquid , a professional League of Legends team, practice for a minimum of 50 hours per week and most play the game far more. Players are generally in competition by their mid- to late-teens, with most retiring by their lates. In most team-based esports, organized play is centered around the use of promotion and relegation to move sponsored teams between leagues within the competition's organization based on how the team fared in matches; this follows patterns of professional sports in European and Asian countries.
Teams will play a number of games across a season as to vie for top positioning in the league by the end of that season. Those that do well, in addition to prize money, may be promoted into a higher-level league, while those that fare poorly can be regulated downward.
For example, until Riot Games ran several League of Legends series, with the League of Legends Championship Series being the top-tier series. Teams that did not do well were relegated to the League of Legends Challenger Series , replaced by the better performing teams from that series.
This format was discontinued when Riot opted to use the franchise format in mid, but the promotion and relegation format still exists within Southeast Asia's Pacific Championship Series and in North America's new tier 2 league, the North American Challengers Series, as of With rising interest in viewership of esports, some companies sought to create leagues that followed the franchise approach used in North American professional sports , in which all teams, backed by a major financial sponsor to support the franchise, participate in a regular season of matches to vie for top standing as to participate in the post-season games.
This approach is more attractive for larger investors, who would be more willing to back a team that remains playing in the esport's premiere league and not threatened to be relegated to a lower standing. While there is no team promotion or relegation, players can be signed onto contracts, traded among teams, or let go as free agents, and new players may be pulled from the esports' equivalent minor league.
The first such league to be formed was the Overwatch League , established by Blizzard Entertainment in based on its Overwatch game. Take-Two Interactive partnered with the National Basketball Association NBA to create the NBA 2K League , using the NBA 2K game series.
It is the first esports league to be operated by a professional sports league, and the NBA sought to have a League team partially sponsored by each of the 30 professional NBA teams.
Its inaugural season started in May with 17 teams and the league has since expanded to 25 teams, including teams owned by Gen. G and Australia's National Basketball League.
Similar to the NBA 2K League, EA Sports and Major League Soccer MLS established the eMLS in , a league using EA's FIFA Now known as EA Sports FC series. Activision launched its team Call of Duty League in January , following the format of the Overwatch League but based on the Call of Duty series.
Cloud9 and Dignitas, among others, developed a franchise-based Counter-Strike: Global Offensive league, Flashpoint, in February This was the first such esports league to be owned by the teams rather than any single organization.
Esports are also frequently played in tournaments, where potential players and teams vie to be placed through qualification matches before entering the tournament. From there, the tournament formats can vary from single or double elimination , sometimes hybridized with group stage.
The tournament may be part of a larger gathering, such as Dreamhack , or the competition may be the entirety of the event, like the World Cyber Games or the Fortnite World Cup. Esports competitions have also become a popular feature at gaming and multi-genre conventions. Although competitions involving video games have long existed, esports underwent a significant transition in the late s.
Beginning with the Cyberathlete Professional League in , tournaments became much larger, and corporate sponsorship became more common.
Increasing viewership both in person and online brought esports to a wider audience. The average compensation for professional esports players does not compare to those of the top classical sports organizations in the world.
While prizes for esports competitions can be very large, the limited number of competitions and large number of competitors ultimately lowers the amount of money one can make in the industry. For well established games, total prize money can amount to millions of U.
dollars a year. Often, game developers provide prize money for tournament competition directly, [] but sponsorship may also come from third parties, typically companies selling computer hardware , energy drinks , or computer software.
Generally, hosting a large esports event is not profitable as a stand-alone venture. There is considerable variation and negotiation over the relationship between video game developers and tournament organizers and broadcasters. While the original StarCraft events emerged in South Korea largely independently of Blizzard, the company decided to require organizers and broadcasters to authorize events featuring the sequel StarCraft II.
In addition to professional and amateur esports, esports have drawn attention of colleges and high schools since Along with the bursting popularity of esports over the last two decades came a demand for extended opportunities for esports athletes.
Universities across the world mostly China and America began offering scholarship opportunities to incoming freshmen to join their collegiate esports teams. According to Schaeperkoetter and others, the potential impact that an esports program could have on a university, coupled with the growing interest that universities are showing in such a program, combine to make this line of research relevant in sport literature.
As of , over colleges have esports-based variety programs. While game publishers or esports broadcasters typically act in oversight roles for specific esports, a number of esports governing bodies have been established to collectively represent esports on a national, regional or global basis.
These governing bodies may have various levels of involvement with the esport, from being part of esports regulation to simply acting more as a trade group and public face for esports.
The International Esports Federation IESF was one of the first such bodies. Originally formed in to help promote esports in the southeast Asian region, it has grown to include 56 member countries from across the global. The IESF has managed annual Esports World Championships for teams from its member countries across multiple games.
The European Esports Federation was formed in April and includes UK, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary, France, Russia, Slovenia, Serbia, Sweden, Turkey, and Ukraine.
This body was designed more to be a managing partner for other esports, working to coordinate event structures and regulations across multiple esports. Additionally, trade groups representing video games have also generally acted as governing bodies for esports.
Notably, in November , five major national trade organizations — the Entertainment Software Association in the United States, the Entertainment Software Association of Canada , The Association for UK Interactive Entertainment , Interactive Software Federation of Europe, and the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association of Australian and New Zealand — issued a joined statement for supporting the promotion and participation of esports to respect player safety and integrity, respect and diversity among players, and enriching game play.
A research led by Ingo Froböse, a professor at the German Sports University in Cologne , for over eight years found professional and also amateur esports gamers play on average 24—25 hours per week and even physical activities after hours of playing are not able to compensate the damage of oversitting.
Players in China may train for almost 14 hours a day. A study conducted in of CS:GO players found that total hours played were about Gamers with poor posture sit in forward head posture which can cause symptoms such as decreased arm or shoulder mobility and tension headaches.
In addition to sedentary behaviors, players' mental health is a concern for scientists. One study found that competitors in esports are often under psychological and physical stress, and the amateur ones are the most affected, since they frequently aim at greater wins without enough preparation, though no clear training guidelines are set to become professional players.
A study found a correlation between depression and training time leading to sleep disturbances. Misfits has hired a psychologist to ensure players are equipped with methods to deal with stress and anxiety.
Esports athletes are usually obligated to behave ethically, abiding by both the explicit rules set out by tournaments, associations, and teams, as well as following general expectations of good sportsmanship.
For example, it is common practice and considered good etiquette to send a message saying "gg" for "good game" to your opponent s when defeated. In a prominent example of good conduct, during a IEM StarCraft II game, the players Feast and DeMusliM both voluntarily offered information about their strategies to negate the influence of outside information inadvertently leaked to "Feast" during the game.
In professional League of Legends player Christian "IWillDominate" Riviera was banned from competing for a period of one year following a history of verbal abuse. Team Siren, an all-female League of Legends team, was formed in June The announcement of the team was met with controversy, being dismissed as a "gimmick" to attract the attention of men.
The team was met with similar criticism. There have been serious violations of the rules in certain esports. In , eleven StarCraft: Brood War players were found guilty of fixing matches for profit , and were fined and banned from future competition.
Team Curse and Team Dignitas were denied prize money for collusion during the MLG Summer Championship. Reports of widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs PEDs in esports are not uncommon, with players discussing their own, their teammates' and their competitors' use as well as officials acknowledging the prevalence of the issue.
Conversely, drugs with calming effects are also sought after. Some players take propranolol , which blocks the effects of adrenaline , or Valium , which is prescribed to treat anxiety disorder , in order to remain calm under pressure.
pro in the ESL One Katowice Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament, and went on to claim that "everyone" at ESEA League tournaments uses Adderall. The unregulated use of such drugs poses severe risks to competitors' health, including addiction , overdose , serotonin syndrome and, in the case of stimulants, weight loss.
Although International e-Sports Federation IeSF is a signatory of the World Anti-Doping Agency , the governing body has not outlawed any PEDs in its sanctioned competitions. These energy drinks are often marketed specifically toward gamers, and have also faced media and regulatory scrutiny due to their health risks.
There has been some concern over the quality of life and potential mistreatment of players by organizations, especially in South Korea. Korean organizations have been accused of refusing to pay competitive salaries, leading to a slow exodus of Korean players to other markets.
In an interview, League of Legends player Bae "Dade" Eo-jin said that "Korean players wake up at 1 pm and play until 5 am", and suggested that the hour play schedule was a significant factor in causing burnout. To combat the negative environment, Korean League of Legends teams were given new rules for the upcoming season by Riot Games, including the adoption of minimum salaries for professional players, requiring contracts and allowing players to stream individually for additional player revenue.
Since esports games often requires many actions per minute, some players may get repetitive strain injuries, causing hand or wrist pain. The League of Legends Championship Series and League of Legends Champions Korea offer guaranteed salaries for players.
During the COVID pandemic , the video gaming industry bypassed many economic sectors by providing a means of compensating for the physical isolation imposed by the lockdown, transforming it into an increasingly important economic sector within the global economy.
Current all-female esports teams include Frag Dolls and PMS Clan. In , the first online video game called Netrek was released. Two years later, Nintendo hosted a world championship in the United States of America. In the following years, lan parties became more and more popular, which made it much easier for players to participate in competitions.
In addition, the spread of the internet and increasingly affordable as well as powerful hardware and software greatly lessened the barrier to entry. During this time, competitions were mostly held in large halls, but over the years, local restrictions have been increasingly lifted.
At the end of the 90s, major nation-independent eSports leagues were established for the first time. During this time eSports teams were founded, some of which are still present today.
First and foremost the German SK Gaming or the British 4Kings. Other well-known eSports organizations from Europe are mousesports and fnatic. They are still fighting at the top in some disciplines.
The first World Cyber Games were held in Seoul in In , the first Electronic Sports World Cup was held in France. the first Electronic Sports World Cup was held in France. Until today this tournament takes place once a year in Poitiers. In , the CPL World Tour took place, where a prize money of 1,, dollars was played for.
The industry continued to evolve and gain more and more followers. In , the League of Legends final was watched by over 10, fans and was completely sold out within an hour.
Successful eSports players are the superstars of a new generation. Not only do successful athletes earn millions in prize money in numerous tournaments. The social media reach of the stars is comparable to that of professional footballers and top athletes.
On platforms such as Twitch and YouTube, the biggest eSports stars reach millions of people every day in livestreams. At the same time, the number of players who are able to make a living from their profession continues to rise.
There are over 30, professional athletes worldwide in the five biggest eSports titles alone Counter Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends, Fortnite, Dota 2, Overwatch combined.
The old cliché applies: Those who play a lot online live a secluded life and like to isolate themselves from the outside world. But the exact opposite is true: eSports is not a sport for loners! As in traditional sports, team chemistry affects both competitive and casual play.
Good teamwork and communication are crucial for players to execute their strategy. Paralympics and leagues for women? Not in eSports. eSports players who want to be successful don't necessarily have it any easier than professionals in classic sports. But for athletes, eSports has a very central advantage: in terms of physical limitations, there are of course no barriers in eSports.
Over the past decade, eSports has been growing in popularity. Especially thanks to the popularization through the streaming platform Twitch, more and more fans have started to actively follow esports events. The growth is increasing every year and there is no end in sight.
The increase in viewership has gone hand in hand with a massive increase in prize money on offer. The eSports market is growing and growing. The trend is going steeply upwards.
While the global turnover of the eSports market in was still million US dollars, the billion dollar mark is expected to be reached this year. For the year , revenues of 1.
This growth, of course, presents numerous opportunities for companies and clubs looking to capitalize on this new market. These are just a few of the new, potential sources of revenue.
From its former niche existence, eSports has long since developed into a mass phenomenon that is watched daily by an audience of millions via livestream or in sold-out stadiums.
Gamers have to train hard and perform at a high level, both mentally and physically, which is why eSports is now also considered a recognized sport. The International Olympic Committee IOC also decided to include this sport in the program at the Summer Olympics from July 23 to August 08, The launch of the Olympic Virtual Series OSV seeks to mobilize virtual sports, eSports and gaming enthusiasts around the world.
As a result, it aims to reach a new Olympic audience. Just like in real sports, there are a lot of terms in its virtual offshoot that leave the layman wondering and, above all, asking questions.
A distinction must be made between general terms that apply to all games and those that have a special meaning for individual games. eSport is a very fast sport in which reaction time is often decisive for victory or defeat.
Therefore, technical terms and especially time-saving abbreviations determine the communication between the players. Especially in large League of Legends or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournaments, which are moderated by casters, it is difficult to follow the game without the necessary technical terms and abbreviations.
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