Rise of Electronic Sports?

So, The International 3 has just ended, and boy it was a hell of an event.

Biggest e-sports event, ever.

For those who are not familiar with the term e-sports, it means electronic sports, and it is literally what it is; sports played on electronic devices. We’re talking about famous games like Counter Strike, Battlefield, League of Legends, Dota and many more being played competitively for prize money. Ten years ago e-sports would have been a waste of time. Your parents would probably kill you if you mention about a career playing games competitively. But today, e-sports is actually quite a big thing, the community is growing rapidly, and you can actually earn BIG money pursuing a career in e-sports.

Take The International 3 for example, it is the biggest e-sports event around. It is held yearly, and its prize pool is HUGE. This year’s prize pool featured 2.6million USD. Top teams from all around the world came to compete to get their hands on the money, and to some of the teams it was more than just the money, it was about making their efforts known.

It was like the World Cup for Dota 2.

I mean, check this team out. Neolution Orange E-sports is a Dota 2 team from Malaysia that snatched the 3rd place in TI3. Immediately their status in their home country was cemented, and they gained massive recognition for their efforts in the tournament. Hell, even the Sports Ministry of Malaysia is starting to back the country’s e-sports scene after Orange’s performance. 

Just so that you get a better picture of how huge this event was, here’s an article of it being covered by BBC News.

And here’s a video of it being covered by Q13 Fox’s morning report, who cannot believe “what a big deal this is worldwide”, and calling it an “amazing sub-culture that no one knew”.

During the grand finals of the event, it gathered a combined total of more than one million concurrent viewers online for its live stream. Yes, watching live streams of e-sports is totally a culture among e-sports enthusiast today. We’re not just talking about Dota, people are flooding stream sites for games like League of Legends or Battlefield as well. Everyday there are more than a million unique viewers tuning in to watch their favourite streamers play their favourite games.

Sponsors that are making this kind of e-sports event happen are attracting more and more players to commit their lives and compete. This has really improved the e-sports scene of late and its current stature is definitely looking healthy right now.

Who knows, five to ten years from now, this may even be a thing as big as the NBA, or the BPL. Perhaps, e-sports in Olympics?!