This gradually changed too, as home computers kept becoming more powerful and less expensive.With broadcasting now more affordable and centralized through Twitch, tournaments were more viable. FIFA 17 Focus: How to become a pro FIFA 17 player. Perfect for esports.
The most historic of which was the Championship Gaming Series operated by DirecTV in the United States, which crashed and burned. Global Business and Financial News, Stock Quotes, and Market Data and Analysis.Overwatch League, a professional league set up by Activision Blizzard featuring its billion-dollar franchise "Overwatch" game, was the first global league with a city-based system and came with a business structure mirroring that of traditional sports leagues.However, Etienne believes that the advent of leagues like Overwatch provide a sort of "roadmap" for the industry going forward that could be emulated.Riot said the League of Legends World Championships in November, for instance, attracted nearly 100 million unique viewers for the finals. It also helped establish Super Smash Brothers for Wii as one of the most popular esports games of its time.Each passing decade has seen esports reach new milestones and the future continues to look brighter. From 1997 to 1999 Asia was hit by a period of financial crisis, and South Korea was one of the countries most affected alongside Indonesia and Thailand. Fortunately for South Koreans, the arrival of high-speed internet led to the rise of net-cafes known as “PC Bangs”, which offered its patrons the opportunity to play video games at a very affordable rate.While in the nighties each event had hosted tournaments for multiple titles, this no longer became the norm, with many titles successful and popular enough to warrant their own competition.
Third party tournament organizers such as ESL were also stepping up their game, creating premier offline tournament series such as ESL One and the Intel Extreme Masters, funded by prolific investment.In addition to making video gaming more accessible to families around the world, Nintendo also helped competitive gaming continue to grow. The tournaments which emerged in the mid-1990s coincided with the popularity of fighting games and first-person shooters, genres which still maintain a devoted fan base.In the 2000s, real-time strategy games became overwhelmingly popular in South Korean internet cafés, with crucial influence on the development of esports worldwide. Initially one-off purchases, fresh content soon became part of BattlePasses – the esports equivalent of a season pass. Thresh had been a minor celebrity in North America, but the South Korean professional Starcraft players were superstars in their own right. The Sega Genesis came out in 1989, sparking an “arms race” that would lead to video games getting exponentially better in a short period of time.During the financial crisis, PC Bangs became a place to hang out and socialize with friends, often by playing cooperative or competitive titles. They also have ensured a more consistent broadcast quality and sustainable ecosystem for players. Dennis “Thresh” Fong earned the win, etching his place into history and earning the tournament’s grand prize; a Ferarri 328 GTS previously owned by Quake programmer John D. Carmack.While the Atari had its share of popularity during the 1980’s, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) took the controls, graphics, gameplay and accessibility of video games to a new level. ), the arrival of CD-Rom technology and more affordable home computers, were also key factors in the huge leap competitive gaming took at the start of the 1990s.
Last year's Super Bowl saw viewership numbers clock in at just over 103 million.Ultimately Etienne sees the biggest esports leagues in the world only getting bigger to be on par with the traditional sports industry.Sign up for free newsletters and get more CNBC delivered to your inbox"I think when Activision built Overwatch League, they really showed the world how much money you could make with these competitive games," said Etienne. eSports truly started to come into its own after the turn of the millennium, with the rise of both popular tournaments and the games that now make up the backbone of the eSports world.