With the world of eSports now a billion-dollar industry, we walk you through its evolution from university competition to global phenomenon
Modern eSports is a powerhouse industry, with teams worth multi-million pound sums and the best players enjoying near-celebrity status.
But, in the grand scheme of things, it is a phenomenon that is relatively recent.
The glossy, pre-packaged eSports of today hasn’t been around for very long, but its origins stretch back decades – almost as far as the beginning of video games themselves.
Early beginnings
The concept of eSports can be said to have been first recorded in 1972.
A simple video game competition on the game Spacewar took place at Stanford University, with the grand prize being a year’s subscription to Rolling Stone magazine. Right on!
The next big leap came a full eight years later, in the form of the 1980 Space Invaders Championship held by Atari.
It was the first large-scale video game competition, attracting more than 10,000 participants from across the US.
In the following decade, video game tournaments and competitions seeped into mainstream culture, with iconic games such as Pac-Man and Donkey Kong leading the charge.
Nevertheless, it remained firmly a hobby and entirely different to what we now dub eSports.
Internet boom
However, with the 1990s well under way, internet connectivity changed the gaming landscape forever.
PC games enabled players to compete online and tournaments featured popular titles such as Quake and Warcraft.
Blockbuster Video ran a popular gaming tournament in the early 90s and the latter part of the decade saw the rise of celebrated competitions such as QuakeCon and the Professional Gamers League.
Formative eSports also found its way onto our screens, most famously in the original Tron.
But outside of fiction, gaming TV programmes gained some traction in the 1990s.
Shows such as GamesMaster in the UK and A*mazing in Australia were produced, while the USA aired competitive gaming even earlier with Starcade in the 1980s.
This all helped to push eSports that little bit further into mainstream culture, paving the way for the modern industry.
Big bang in Korea
So how did modern eSports develop from these early incarnations? The short answer is: Korea.
Following the Asian financial crisis, the South Korean government invested heavily in broadband and telecoms.
After this, there are various theories as to why eSports started to become so popular, but the 1998 release of Starcraft certainly helped things along.
The Korean PC bang culture – a PC bang is essentially an internet café – contributed to fostering a huge community of competitive gamers, and Starcraft was the game to play.
Helped along by the government’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Korea grew a thriving eSports industry with organised leagues, professional teams and stadium shows packed with enthused fans.
It became an economic powerhouse in the country, setting the bar for what eSports could transform into elsewhere.
As Dutch pro gamer Manuel Schenkhuizen said to the New York Times in 2014:
“Pro gaming exists in its current form and size in large part thanks to the people who made it possible in South Korea. Other countries took years to catch up and are to this date trying to mimic some of their successes.”
Move over for MOBAs
By the start of the second decade of the 21st Century, eSports was really beginning to transform into something utterly unlike its earlier incarnations.
This period saw the rise of professional gaming teams such as Fnatic and SK Gaming, stadium-filling competitions, loyal and enthusiastic fan followings, and some of the industry’s most iconic games.
Counter-Strike, Quake, Warcraft and Starcraft had been competitive gaming staples for a while, but the Defence of the Ancients mod for Warcraft III ushered in the popularity of MOBAs – multiplayer online battle arena games.
MOBAs such as League of Legends, Dota 2, Heroes of the Storm and Smite are still some of today’s most popular eSports games – and they’re still growing.
Lucrative business
The figures certainly tell an astonishing story.
In the year 2000, there were 10 competitive gaming tournaments; by 2010 there were about 260.
The eSports economy has gone from being relatively obscure and unmonitored 10 years ago, to generating revenue of about $750m last year.
Global eSports revenue is predicted to be almost $2bn by 2018.
That gives a remarkable indication of the rate of growth of the eSports industry and should also explain why so many other sectors are rushing to invest and integrate.
Tech companies, streaming services such as Twitch, and ESPN all now cover eSports, while game publishers and even sports drinks companies are now deeply involved in helping to fund, sponsor and normalise eSports as a part of mainstream culture.
The same is true of the betting industry, with Betway one of the first betting companies to offer markets on eSports.
The rise of eSports has the potential to be the next big game-changer for the betting industry and Betway is at the forefront of generating wider exposure for professional gaming by offering several hundreds of betting markets to choose from on the most popular games.
Today we have highly organised continental leagues, global tournaments and celebrity pro gamers.
Last year saw the biggest ever eSports competition prize pool, major milestones in eSports broadcasting and an even wider variety of games being played professionally.
The history of eSports is fascinating, but it is surely nothing compared to what is coming next.
