The Rise of eSports

When did the rise of eSports begin? The first eSports tournament was held in 1972, but the rise of eSports did not happen until the late ’90s. The first boom of the eSports world began when Blizzard developed a game call StarCraft. At first, the StarCraft community was not noted to be competitive, but after its first expansion, StarCraft: Brood War was released in 1999, and it became a massive international hit. Following that, media companies in South Korea, such as OnMedia and MBC Plus, launched their own StarCraft eSports tournaments—the OnGameNet Starleague and the MBCGame StarCraft League. Those tournaments had sponsorships from companies like Samsung and SK Telecom, which are giants in the telecommunications industry. Reports show that tens of thousands of viewers watched the finals of the tournament. Thanks to StarCraft, eSports has a massive viewership. It is no surprise that this game also created one of the earliest eSports superstars, Lim “BoxeR” Yo-Hwan.

As StarCraft was booming, South Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Information and Communications and Tourism, and Samsung announced their sponsorship of an event called the World Cyber Games (WCG) Challenge in 2000, also known as the eSports Olympics. The WCG operates like the Olympic Games, which means it also has an opening ceremony and gold, silver, and bronze medals for winners from various countries.

The second boom of eSports was a result of the game developed by Riot called League of Legends (LoL), in 2009. At first, no one knew how much of phenomenon LoL was going to be, but soon it seemed like everyone started to play. In 2012, Riot announced LoL now had 11 million monthly users worldwide. Four years after that, Riot announced this number had risen to over 100 million. With these massive user bases, LoL eSports have become one of the most successful eSport categories in history. LoL eSports also have record-breaking prizes, with over 5 million U.S. dollars awarded to the winner of the 2016 world championship. With LoL becoming a global phenomenon, many countries started their own tournaments. For example, many Western counties have their own LoL championship series like North America League of Legends Championship Series and League of Legends European Championship, also China has their own championship series call Tencent League of Legends Pro League. Because of how successful LoL pro-tournaments have become, in 2013, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced the U.S.’ recognition of LoL pro-players as professional athletes.

The third and most present boom of eSports was when Overwatch created a professional league (OWL). The organizational structure of this league is similar to traditional sports leagues such as the NBA or NFL. With this effort to merge eSports with traditional sports, OWL has successfully created a professional environment in which the salaries of pro-players no longer depend solely on their ability to win tournaments or not; every professional player in the leagues now has a base salary with which they can support their family, just like traditional pro-players. Also, OWL makes the effort to work with traditional media companies like ESPN and ABC and has successfully brought eSports events to a more traditional sports audience.

All these booms of eSports have successfully brought competitive gaming to the attention of the International Olympic Committee. At the 2017 Olympic Summit, the committee agreed that eSports could be considered an Olympic sport if the video game does not violate any “Olympic values.”

Sources:

How Blizzard’s StarCraft Became South Korea’s National Pastime

https://www.thescoreesports.com/lol/news/14525-infographic-the-history-of-league-of-legends

International Olympic Committee to Talk Esports with Industry Stakeholders and Players