A
BEWITCHING
CREATURE HALF
WOMAN
HALF DEER
BATTLES
SHAMAN
A AND A SENTIENT
TREE LIGHTNING
STRIKE WEAPONS BOLTS
EXPLODE NASTY SPELL ARE
CAST.
DOTA2, like so many games across the Internet, transports teams of players from their bedrooms to a verdant virtual world where they smite each other through keyboard and mouse clicks. Except on this sunny day in July, every attack and counterattack by a five-person team set off an eruption of cheers — from the more than 11,000 spectators crammed into this city’s basketball arena. The contestants were aiming for a big piece of the $11 million in total prize money. And the game’s developer, the Valve Corporation, moved another step closer to securing gaming’s legitimacy as a major-league spectator sport. Having already changed the entertainment world, the games industry has turned its ambitions toward the world of professional video game competition, widely known as e-sports.
ESPN | PAGE 4
A NEW BREED OF
SPORTS VIEWERSHIP The signs of success already mirror the achievements of major sports. Game tournaments sell out giant arenas, and some attract at-home audiences larger than those of top traditional sporting events. Madison Avenue’s highest fliers, like Coca-Cola and American Express, have lined up as sponsors. Prize money has soared to the millions of dollars, and top players earn six- or seven-figure incomes and attract big and passionate followings, luring a generation of younger players to seek fame and fortune as gamers.
5
Last year, the State Department began granting visas to professional gamers, under the same program used by traditional athletes. This fall, Robert Morris University in Chicago will dole out over $500,000 in athletic scholarships to gamers, the first of their kind in the United States, universities have... intercollegiate gaming. Continued on page 5
ESPN | PAGE 5
Last week, the web giant Amazon announced it was buying Twitch, a hugely popular video streaming service used by gamers, for $970 million in cash.
“This stuff is expanding out of control” said James Lampkin, a product manager for ESL ESL (Electronic Sports League), is one of the biggest e-sports leagues, which had 73,000 attendees at a four-day tournament in Katowice, Poland, in March. “We have no idea what the limits are.”
IT’S NOT THE NEWKID ON THE STREET Game competitions have been around for decades, but what was happening at that arena in July would have been unthinkable, even laughable, only a few years ago. As broadband Internet access and free-to-play games have spread, gaming competitions have multiplied in size and frequency around the world, going beyond early strongholds like South Korea. At the Seattle event, cheering fans, many dressed in costumes to look like game characters, hoisted national flags to show support for their favorite teams.
ESPN | PAGE 6
LEAGUE OF LEGENDS SEASON 3 WORLDS
BCS NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP
26.3 26.4 32.0 NBA FINALS (GAME 7)
NCAA FINALS
14.7 15.7 MLB WORLD SERIES
SPORTS VIEWER
COUNT IN MILLIONS More than 70 million people worldwide watch e-sports over the Internet or on TVs, according to estimates by SuperData Research. South Korea even has a TV channel devoted largely to e-sports. A championship tournament last October for League of Legends, an arena battle game, streamed around the world, attracting 8.5 million simultaneous online viewers at its peak — the same as the peak viewership for the deciding game of professional hockey’s Stanley Cup finals in June. This year, the League of
Legends championship is expected to attract 40,000 to 50,000 attendees to a soccer stadium in Seoul. The arena at the International, a tournament for the video game Dota 2 organized at Seattle’s Key Arena in July by Valve, the game’s publisher. The pool of prize money was almost $11 million.
“I don’t think we’ve ever seen the opportunities for e-sports as promising as they are today,” said Robert A. Kotick, chief executive of Activision Blizzard. As the fan base and money in e-sports have ballooned, multiple independent game leagues have emerged, including ESL and Major League Gaming, that collectively put on dozens of competitions a year. Game publishers host events, too, seeing irresistible opportunities to promote their games. One of the most ambitious publisher efforts is from the creator of League of Legends, Riot Games, which operates leagues around the world. For the last two years, another publisher, Activision Blizzard, has put up $1 million in prize money for a championship in Los Angeles for its combat shooting game Call of Duty.
ESPN | PAGE 7