Who Started Esports and Why It Matters

Esports has seen a meteoric rise in popularity in recent years. But who started esports and why does it matter?

Origins of Esports

The first video game competition took place in October 1972 at Stanford University. This event was organized by a student and former stand-up comedian, Bill Pitts, and his roommate, a student and avid video game player, Bruce Baumgart. Forty years later, the global esports industry is worth over a billion dollars and has a fanbase of hundreds of millions of people. But who started esports and why does it matter?

The first video game tournament

The first video game tournament took place on October 19, 1972 at Stanford University. Students played a Spacewar game for a chance to win a year’s subscription to Rolling Stone magazine. The winner, Bruce Baumgart, is recognized as the first esports champion.

While today’s tournaments have evolved into multimillion-dollar affairs with global reach, they still remember their roots. The annual World Championship finals for the popular MOBA game League of Legends is held at the same university – Stanford – in the same month – October.

The prize pools for some of today’s biggest tournaments rival those of traditional sports. The International 2018, a Dota 2 tournament, had a prize pool of over $25 million. The winning team took home over $11 million – more than double what Tiger Woods earned for his win at the 2019 Masters Tournament.

The rise of arcade culture

In the 1970s, a new form of entertainment began to rise in popularity: video games. One of the earliest and most popular video games was “Space Invaders”, which was released in 1978. “Pac-Man” followed in 1980, becoming one of the most popular games of all time. These games were played on arcade cabinets, which were large machines that housed the game and its hardware. Players would insert coins into the machine to play the game.

The arcade culture began to grow in the early 1980s with the release of classics like ” Donkey Kong”, “Frogger”, and “Ms. Pac-Man”. By the middle of the decade, there were over 20,000 arcade cabinets in America. Many of these were located in pizza parlors, bowling alleys, and other public places. People would go to these locations to play games and socialize with others.

The rise of home console systems like the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985 led to a decline in arcade culture. With NES, people could play video games at home instead of going out to an arcade. However, this did not stop people from playing video games together. In fact, it may have even helped esports grow by making it more accessible to people.

The birth of console gaming

console gaming can be traced back to 1972, when Atari released the first commercially successful arcade game, Pong. Home console systems began to gain popularity in the late 1970s with the release of systems like the Atari 2600 and the Commodore 64. The 1980s saw the rise of arcade games and video game culture, with iconic titles like Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, and Space Invaders.

The 1990s were a golden age for console gaming, with the release of iconic titles like Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and Sonic the Hedgehog. This decade also saw the birth of professional gaming with the formation of the original professional video game league, Major League Gaming (MLG).

Today, esports is a global phenomenon with professional gaming leagues and tournaments all over the world. The popularity of esports has only continued to grow in recent years, with events like The International (a Dota 2 tournament) consistently setting new records for prize pools.

Why Esports Matter

Esports didn’t just appear out of nowhere. It has a long and complicated history, one which is often forgotten or misunderstood. tracing the origins of esports can help us understand why it matters today. From its early days as a niche hobby to its current status as a multi-million dollar industry, esports has come a long way.

Esports as a legitimate sport

Though esports originally developed out of the competitive gaming scene, it has since grown into a legitimized sport with athletes from all over the world. Today, there are over 65 million people who regularly watch esports, with the total global audience expected to reach nearly 300 million by 2022.

With such a large and passionate following, it’s no surprise that esports has drawn the attention of some of the biggest names in traditional sports. Major League Soccer (MLS) club LAFC became the first professional sports team to sign an esports athlete when they signed Rick “Trick2G” Fersner in March 2019. The NBA has also launched its own official esports league, NBA 2K League, while numerous NFL teams have signedex-NFL players to compete under their banner in Madden competitions.

Even colleges are getting in on the action, with more than 70 colleges and universities in the US now offering scholarships for gamers. As esports continues to grow in popularity, we can only expect to see more traditional sports teams and institutions getting involved.

The business of Esports

Over the past decade, esports has transformed from a niche hobby to a booming industry with immense global reach. Professional gamers now command multimillion-dollar contracts, sponsored by some of the world’s biggest brands. And whileCritics argue that esports is little more than glorified gaming, its fans and participants counter that it requires the same dedication, discipline and hand-eye coordination as traditional sports.

But where did esports come from? And why does it matter?

A Brief History of Esports
The first organized esports event took place in 1972 at Stanford University, where students played a Spacewar tournament for a top prize of a year’s subscription to Rolling Stone magazine. But it wasn’t until the late 1990s — with the advent of broadband internet and improved graphics — that professional gaming really took off.

One of the earliest and most influential esport was Blizzard’s real-time strategy game StarCraft: Brood War. Launched in 1998, it was played competitively in South Korea thanks to its deep lore and complicated gameplay mechanics. StarCraft: Brood War was so popular that pro gamers were treated like celebrities, complete with managers, trainers and fans.

Other popular early esport games included first-person shooters (FPS) like Quake III Arena and Counter-Strike as well as massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft. These games laid the foundation for modern esports by attracting large communities of players and spectators who came together to form professional teams and leagues.

The Rise of Modern Esports
Today, there are dozens of professional esports leagues around the world featuring some of the most popular video games, including FPS games like Overwatch and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), battle royale titles like Fortnite, MOBAs like Dota 2 and League of Legends (LoL), card games like Hearthstone, fighting games like Street Fighter V and more.

The future of Esports

Esports is a form of competition that is facilitated by electronic systems, particularly video games; the input of players and teams as well as the output of the esports system is mediated by human-computer interfaces. Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, individually or as teams. Although organized online and offline competitions have long been a part of video game culture, these were largely between amateurs until the late 2000s when participation by professional gamers and spectatorship in these events began to rise. By the 2010s, esports was a significant factor in the video game industry, with many game developers actively designing for such competitions.

The most common video game genres associated with esports are real-time strategy, first-person shooter (FPS), fighting, and multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA). Tournaments such as The International, The League of Legends World Championship, the Overwatch World Cup, and the Fortnite World Cup have been among the largest progressively in terms of both attendance and prize money. Similar to other traditional sports, there are agents and managers that sign teams and players to contracts as well as help them secure sponsorships. Also like other traditional sports, there are leagues and organizations that facilitate competition.[1]

Esports also follows some similar trends to traditional sports when it comes to player health and wellness.[2] For example, like athletes in other traditional sports leagues—such as Major League Baseball or the National Basketball Association—esport athletes’ contracts includes options for mental health coverage and counseling.[3][4] In addition to direct funding from game publishers themselves—as is typical in traditional sports—esport participants’ earnings include indirect revenue streams such as sponsorship deals.[5][6] Some commentators have questioned whether teenagers should be able to earn millions of dollars playing video games,[7] raising concerns about labor rights surrounding esports participants who may be under contractual agreements which prevent them from seeking outside employment.[8][9][10]