How eSports Make The Best Of Telecommunications To Thrive

Image courtesy of Sam Churchill at Flickr.com

Since the beginning of time, men have competed against each other in the never-ending pursuit of fame and glory. The history of sports extends as far back as the existence of military training, to show one’s fitness and usefulness for army recruitment, thus the best being chosen to serve and fight for command. Team sports had most probably been developed to train and prove the capability to fight and work together as a team. These trials and tests of prowess eventually became what we know today as sports. Competitive sports have generally been associated with physical fitness, outdoor activity and imposing displays of bravado; enter eSports and the modern athletes that inspire multitudes to watch their feats in today’s arenas, changing the way we look at sports competitions.

eSports can be defined as a form of sports where the prime aspects of the sport are enabled by electronic systems; the participation of players and teams as well as the projection of the eSports structure are facilitated by human-computer interfaces. Typically eSports take the form of organized multiplayer video game competitions, chiefly between professional players. The most common video game types associated with eSports are real-time strategy (RTS), fighting, first-person shooter (FPS), and multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA). Tournaments such as The International, the League of Legends World Championship, the Battle.net World Championship Series, the Evolution Championship Series, and the Intel Extreme Masters, provide both live broadcasts of the competition, and prize money and salaries to competitors on top of lucrative sponsorship deals by third parties.

Image courtesy of Campus Party Brasil at Flickr.com

Although organized online and offline contests have been a part of videogame culture for a while, involvement and spectatorship of such events have seen a large increase in participation from the late 2000s and early 2010s. While former competitions were largely between amateurs, the rise of professional competitions and growing viewership now supports a significant number of professional players and teams, and not just that, but many video game developers are building features into their games designed to promote such competition. The idea that people may be willing to watch others play competitive video games for big money prizes may surprise skeptics. People often under-estimate the global annual market size and the great amount of viewership harnessed by eSports.

Geographically, eSports competitions come from Germany and the United States, but it is South Korea has the best-established eSports organizations and has been officially licensing professional players for over 15 years. Along with South Korea, the majority of competitions take place in Europe, North America and China. In 2013, Canadian League of Legends player Danny "Shiphtur" Le became the first professional gamer to be granted a United States P-1A visa, a category designated for "Internationally Recognized Athletes".

According to Forbes magazine, the sports market in North America was worth $60.5 billion in 2014 and it is expected to reach $73.5 billion by 2019 and Sports media rights are projected to go from $14.6 billion in 2014 to $20.6 billion by 2019. It is safe to say that sports entertainment is great business. The eSports sector will generate revenue of $621m worldwide this year according to a SuperData report and a revenue estimated to reach $1.9 billion by 2018. It was estimated that approximately 71,500,000 people worldwide watched competitive gaming in 2013 and those numbers are rapidly growing. Most of this exponential growth is due to the increasing availability of streaming media platform and advances of telecommunication. Amazon bought Twitch.tv, one of the largest platforms for eSport streaming, in 2014 for just under $1 billion, while media companies are starting to invest in other eSports corporations and just this year, Twitch itself has teamed up with competitive-gaming platform startup FaceIt to form a professional league that is offering teams co-ownership positions.

“Players and teams are the heart of the eSports community and deserve the opportunity to reap the rewards of their hard work and dedication to grow eSports into a mainstream phenomenon,” said Michele Attisani, co-founder of FaceIt.

Image courtesy of Piotr Drabik at Flickr.com

The future of eSports seems to be expanding into areas that were never even considered before. Even ESPN has now dedicated a whole section on his website to attempt to keep up what goes on in the world of online competitive gaming. The line between the activities you do outside and those indoors with a mouse in front of a screen is narrowing by the day. Not content with invading the realm of traditional broadcasting, eSports now has its very own daily recap show that'll mirror the format of ESPN's SportsCenter. “Cyberathletes” are becoming famous and recognizable everywhere. Although eSports might not match or surpass traditional sports any time soon, its potential business value is clearly too significant to ignore.