The Origin and Evolution of eSports

As eSports has become a global cultural phenomenon, it is interesting to go back and see how it has evolved from the past. When was the birth of eSports? Two factors need to be considered to determine the answer to that question. If the meaning of eSports is about more than one person playing a video game competitively, then the birth of eSports is 1958 with the game “Tennis for Two.” In this game, two people used joysticks to play the game until one person won. But if the meaning of eSports is about having a tournament in which more than two players play video games competitively with a reward for the winner, then the birth of eSports was not until October 1972. In that year the students at Stamford University formed the first eSports tournament in history. During the tournament, students competed on the video game “SpaceWar,” and the winner of this tournament won a year’s subscription to Rolling Stone magazine.

The birth of eSports can date all the way back to 1972, but eSports did not fully emerge until the late 1990s to early 2000s because before then technology did not support mass video game players or even spectators. Back in the 1990s, the only way to watch eSports was to physically go to the tournament events. Two things needed to support the future of competitive gaming are powerful PCs and fast internet networks. Those two things became more affordable to mass households in the late 1990s to early 2000s, which created a mass player base and audience base for eSports and began the global cultural phenomenon.

eSports have grown since more people can afford to buy strong PCs and have access to fast internet. The first World Cyber Games (WCG) was held in Seoul, South Korea, and the first Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC) was held in Poitiers, France, in the early 2000s. The first eSports event with a prize of over one million US dollars was the Cyberathlete Professional League tournament, which took place in ten cities around the world with the finale in New York City.

A few years after the 2000s, the Overwatch League formed the first eSports league and created an organizational structure similar to traditional sports leagues such as the NBA or NFL. With this effort to merge eSports with traditional sports, the total viewership of eSports rose to another level. Blizzard reported the total viewers for the Overwatch League season one finale was close to 11 million people worldwide (Twitch, ESPN, MLG and Chinese partners ZhanQi TV, NetEase CC and Panda TV, South Korea’s MBC network and ABC)

Sources:

https://www.heroesneverdie.com/2018/8/8/17665076/overwatch-league-finals-10-8-million-viewers

View at Medium.com

https://www.ispo.com/en/markets/history-origin-esports