What Was The First Esports Tournament?
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Discover the origins of esports and learn about the very first esports tournament ever held.
The first esports tournament was the Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics in 1972.
The first esports tournament was the Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics, held in October 1972 at Stamford University. The event was organized by Stanford student Alexey Pajitnov and featured the game Spacewar. Pajitnov went on to create the classic puzzle game Tetris.
The Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics had a total of 10 participants and was won by Bruce Baumgart, who played under the alias “Br_”. The prize for the tournament was a year’s subscription to Rolling Stone magazine.
While the Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics is widely recognized as being the first esports tournament, it was not the first competitive video game event. That distinction belongs to a Space War tournament held at MIT in 1972, which predated the Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics by two months.
The first esports tournament with a prize pool was the Red Annihilation Quake tournament in 1997.
The first esports tournament with a prize pool was the Red Annihilation Quake tournament in 1997. The prize pool for this tournament was $100,000, which was provided by the game’s developer, id Software. The winner of the tournament was Dennis “Thresh” Fong, who went on to win a Porsche 911 Carrera 4S as part of his prize.
The first esports tournament with a million-dollar prize pool was The International 2011.
The International is an annual Dota 2 tournament hosted by Valve Corporation, the game’s developer. The first tournament took place in Cologne, Germany in August 2011, and featured a prize pool of US$1.6 million, the largest for any esports tournament at that time. The tournament has been held annually since then. The prize pool for The International 2018 reached over $25 million, making it the largest single esports event in history in terms of prize money.
