The growth of esports has been explosive and is expected to surpass traditional sports in both revenue and viewership in the near future. Its global appeal is attracting big-name brands and social media platforms, and events like the League of Legends World Championship sell out the Staples Center in Los Angeles within minutes of tickets going on sale.
The word esports stands for electronic sport, but the idea behind it has been around longer than you might think. In 1972, Stanford University students took part in the Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics, a competition that featured five-person teams and rewarded the winner with a year’s subscription to Rolling Stone. In 1980, Twin Galaxies was established to record players’ high scores on arcade games, and in the 1990s Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and GoldenEye tournaments became popular.
Professional gamers train intensively to perfect their game and become masters of the art, preparing themselves for competitive play. They are ranked according to their performance, and the top teams compete in regular seasons with playoffs before the World Championship, which often comes with huge prize pools and global recognition.
The most popular esports are multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), first-person shooter (FPS), fighting games and real-time strategy (RTS). Examples include League of Legends, Dota 2, Counter-Strike, Overwatch, and the StarCraft franchise. Famous esports competitors include Faker, a legendary League of Legends mid-laner who is widely considered one of the greatest gamers of all time, and s1mple, a pro player for the Counter-Strike team Fnatic, known for his incredible aim.