The future athletes may not be those who can run the fastest or swim the fastest, but will be those who can play videogames the best. Esports includes any multiplayer video game that is played competitively for spectators, similar to the NBA or NFL, but instead of playing on a field or a court, your playing on a screen. This sport today attracts millions of views and can be viewed in person, on websites such as Twitch or Youtube, and even on TV.
The history of esports is quite short, the first tournament held for an online video game dates back to 1972, hosted at the Stanford University where students battled it out in a game called Spacewar, with the grand final prize being a year long subscription to the Rolling Stones magazine. Since 1972 esports has been nothing but a snowball rolling down a snowy mountain. In 1997 the first tournament was held with thousands of live spectators. It was for a game called Quake, and it was named the Red Annihilation tournament. Dennis “Thresh” Fong was the winner of this tournament, who won a 1987 Ferrari 328 GTS cabriolet. A few weeks after, the first cash prize tournament was run by the CPL (Cyberathlete Professional League) for the game Counter Strike with the grand prize being $15,000. n 2017 there was over $110,000,000 in prize money in over 3700 tournaments spread across multiple different video games. The biggest prize from a single tournament in 2017 was $24,600,000 for the Dota 2 International. In 2018 there was over one hundred and forty nine million dollars given out for prizes across multiple game titles. With this being said, with the booming of esports, there is expected to be over two hundred million in prize money alone in 2019. The popularity of esports has grown exponentially since the first tournament a few decades ago.
Not every video game can be an esport, though. It has to be popular, competitive, and have a fan base surrounding it. Since the boom of esports, there have been a few games that stand out against all the others. Two of the largest games in esports are League of Legends and Dota 2. They both are a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) where two teams of five battle it out in an arena to destroy the other team’s base, games usually lasting 30 to 40 minutes. These games are so popular in esports because there is a huge amount of strategy and teamwork required, so when the best players in the world are on two different teams battling it out, it is quite a show. Another large game in esports is Counter Strike Global Offensive. Similar to the previous two games, it has two teams of five. Counter Strike is different because in one game there are rounds that last 2 minutes, and the first team to win 16 rounds wins. To begin a game, there is a coin flip to decide which team are “Terrorists” and which team are “Counter-Terrorists,” and as the names describe, the objective for terrorists is to plant a bomb on one of two designated locations called “bomb sites” and the objective for the Counter-Terrorists is to prevent those bombs from being planted. This game is perfect for esports because of its simplicity. Everyone can understand what’s going on, and when the games are close, they get intense.
Like all sports, there are players that stand out against all others, like Lebron James for basketball and Lionel Messi for soccer. Players of such magnitudes include Patrik “f0rest” Lindberg for Counter Strike Global Offensive and Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg for League of Legends. Patrik Lindberg began his career in 2005 when he and his teammates attended “World e-Sports Games” in South Korea (this would be similar to the finals of the NBA) and won the entire event ,winning $50,000. Between 2005 and now, he has been on three different teams and has gotten 1st place in over 50 events, winning over $680,000 from tournaments alone. Søren Bjerg began his career in 2013 in the European League of Legends Championship Series “LCS” (similar to how the NBA league works where teams play a scheduled amount of games against each other). He didn’t really blow up until 2014 when he moved to North America to play on “Team SoloMid.” By the end of the season, they had won 22 matches and lost 6, only 2 behind the leading NA team “Cloud 9,” but still made it to the world finals where they made it to quarter finals. Since Søren Bjerg joined “Team SoloMid,” the team has earned a spot in the world finals every year. In Søren Bjerg’s career, he has made over $200,000 off tournaments alone. Although that may not seem like a lot, the way League of Legends run their esports is very similar to the NBA ,where the bulk of money is made off teams salaries.Esports is growing at an exponential rate and is changing the way people see gaming as a whole. This industry is worth over a billion dollars, and has provided jobs for thousands of people and has no sign of slowing down. In the next 20 years you may no longer hang out with you friends to watch the Warriors vs. Raptors game on ESPN but instead watch the world finals of Team Liquid vs. Cloud 9 on Twitch.