E-Sport?
Esports (also known as electronic sports, e-sports, or eSports) is a form of competition using video games. Most commonly, esports takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, individually or as teams.
Sport?
The legitimacy of esports as a sports competition remains in question. However, e-sport has been featured alongside traditional sports in multinational events, and the International Olympic Committee has explored incorporating them into future Olympic events.
In 2019 it is estimated that the total audience of esports will grow to 454 million viewers and that revenues will increase to over US$1 billion. The increasing availability of online streaming media platforms, particularlyPanda.tv , YouTube, and Twitch have become central to the growth and promotion of esports competitions.
The earliest known video game competition took place on 19 October 1972 at Stanford University for the game Spacewar. Stanford students were invited to an "Intergalactic spacewar olympics" whose grand prize was a year's subscription for Rolling Stone, with Bruce Baumgart winning the five-man-free-for-all tournament and Tovar and Robert E.
During the 2010s, esports grew tremendously, incurring a large increase in both viewership and prize money. Although large tournaments were founded before the 21st century, the number and scope of tournaments has increased significantly, going from about 10 tournaments in 2000 to about 260 in 2010.Many successful tournaments were founded during this period, including the World Cyber Games, the Intel Extreme Masters, and Major League Gaming.
In most esports, organized play is centered around the use of promotion and relegation to move sponsored teams between leagues within the competition's organization based on how the team fared in matches; this follows patterns of professional sports in European and Asian countries. However, with rising interest in viewership of esports, some companies sought to create leagues that followed the approach used in North American professional sports, in which all teams participate in a regular season of matches to vie for top standing as to participate in the post-season games. This approach is more attractive for larger investors, who would be more willing to back a team that remains playing in the esport's premiere league and not threatened to be relegated to a lower standing.