The History of Esports

November 1980

• Atari held the first ever large-scale video game tournament: The National Space Invaders Championship. It was created to help promote their console release of the popular game, Space Invaders on the Atari 2600.   The tournament had 10,000 participants and was extremely important to the growth of eSports as it helped popularize competitive gaming and inspired future tournaments to occur.

1996

• Battle by the Bay, a Street Fighter tournament that drew many competitors and viewers began in 1996. It was founded by Tom Cannon. The tournament had 40 participants. Battle of the Bay was later changed, in 2002, to Evolution Championship Series, often called EVO for short. It is an annual tournament that originally took place in the San Francisco bay area, but later changed to the Las Vegas Valley. The tournament originally had the sole purpose of being a Street Fighter tournament, but overtime it has turned into the largest console tournament with additional games such as Mortal Kombat, Super Smash Bros., Marvel vs. Capcom, Tekken, Soul Calibur, Persona 4, and Killer Instinct.

1997

• Electronic Sports League is founded. It was originally named Deutsche Clanliga, but in 2000 it was renamed. Today the ESL has more than 5,000,000 registered members and consists of over 1,000,000 teams, which have played over 22.5 million games in addition to leagues and tournaments. The ESL supports over 50 games in different genres through various national and international leagues. ESL also operates the Intel Extreme Masters.

May 1, 1997

• The Red Annihilation Tournament was for the popular FPS, Quake. It was sponsored by Microsoft and the Grand Prize for the tournament was a Ferrari, owned by John Carmack. This tournament had 2000 participants and it created a demand for more tournaments of a similar nature. Quake was one of the first games that allowed online multiplayer and the first FPS game to have player vs player. From this point on iD software, the creators of Quake, would hold, annually, QuakeCon and as part of the event have a tournament for specific games.

June 27, 1997

• Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) is founded and the first tournament “The FRAG” takes place. The only game played at the tournament is Quake.

July 1998

• QuakeCon’s Quake 2 tournament is held in conjunction with the CPL, the tournament is a great success.

January 1, 2000

• KeSPA is founded, with the approval from the Korean ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. It’s goal when created was to make eSports an official sport and would do this by broadcasting events, making sure to create tournaments and leagues as well as creating a good atmosphere for pro gamers to work in. KeSPA is one of the most important eSports organizations in the world and is the reason that eSports is such a big phenomenon in South Korea.

April 2000

• Razer CPL 2000. The Quake 3 prize pool is an unprecedented $100,000. Fatal1ty wins the Quake 3 Tournament and takes home $40,000.

October 7, 2000

• A new South Korean eSports organization was created in late 2000, by the name of the World Cyber Games. The goal of the organization was to create an annual international tournament similar in a sense to the Olympics, except with eSports instead of actual sports. This was one of the first international competitions. Some of the games included at the events were Counter-Strike, Warcraft 3, StarCraft, Quake 3, Dota 2, League of Legends, FIFA, World of Warcraft, Forza Motorsports, Guitar Hero, Halo, and much more. In 2007, the event was hosted in Seattle, Washington, United States, with a total prize pool of US$4 Million. This was the largest prize pool ever for a tournament. The 2007 WCG Finals was also the beginning of the end. In February of 2014, the CEO Brad Lee announced the closing of the WCG.

December 2000

• Babbage’s CPL 2000. The Quake 3 prize pool is $100,000, with first place receiving $25,000. ZeRo4 wins the Quake 3 Tournament. A new competitive game is also introduced at the tournament, Counter-Strike (CS), that would help redefine the value of eSports. The prize pool is $15,000, and first place receives $5,000. Team e9 wins the CS tournament.

April 12, 2001

• Virtua CPL Latin America is held in Sao Paulo, Brazil. This is the first major international tournament that is held in South America. The Counter-Strike prize pool is $13,711, with first place receiving $4,570. SK Gaming wins the tournament.

December 2001

• CPL World Championship. The Quake 3 tournament is replaced by Alien Versus Predator 2 (AvP2). Fatal1ty wins the AvP2 tournament. The grand prize is $40,000, modified 2002 Ford Focus ZX3, Darkhorse Comics, Alien Legacy Limited Collector’s DVD set, Predator Collector’s DVD, and a Motorola cell phone. The Counter-Strike tournament has a prize pool of $150,000. Ninjas in Pyjamas defeated TeamX3 to win the CS tournament, earning $50,000.

January 2002

• Major League Gaming (MLG) is founded. For many years the MLG was one of the biggest eSports organizations, with tournaments for dozens of differents titles and genres. Their goal when being founded as a company was to turn competitive gaming into a more professional unconventional sport with real competition and prizes and also creating value for spectators. They sought to turn eSports into a mainstream entertainment.

January 2003

• Electronic Sports Entertainment Association (ESEA) was founded solely offering lessons to improve gaming skills in the games of Counter-Strike, and WarCraft 3. They expanded in 2004 to include Team Fortress 2. They also expanded by adding game servers for players to do pugs, competitive Pick Up Games. This allowed for people to hone their skill without needing to find a server to play on and other players to join them, since their 3rd party client and private servers handled that process. ESEA slowly grew in notoriety, in the Counter-Strike community especially, because of an anti-cheat software that they created to prevent hackers from being a part of the community. By swiftly banning any violators of their rules, their anti-cheat software allowed for a safe haven from the cheat riddled world of competitive scrimmaging in Counter-Strike.

July 2003

• The Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC) is founded. The ESWC is an international professional gaming championship tournament. Every year winners of national qualifier events around the world earn the right to represent their country in the ESWC Finals. The event has won a lot of praise for its organization and ability to put on a good show for spectators. The ESWC was originally created by a French company called Ligarena. In 2005, Ligarena was renamed Games-Services. In 2009, ESWC was acquired by another French firm by the name of Games-Solution.

• CPL Summer. The Counter-Strike tournament is bigger than ever with a significant growth in participants, and spectators. The prize pool clearly validates this growing market as it has grown to an astounding $200,000. SK Gaming defeated Team9 in the finals, earning $60,000.

• Online gaming leagues and tournaments are reaching unprecedented all-time highs in regards to participators, sponsors, and spectators.

December 2003

• CPL Winter. The Counter-Strike tournament has a prize pool of $100,000 with first place receiving $30,000. SK Gaming defeated NoA in the grand finals to win the tournament. A new game emerged in the competitive scene, Halo: Combat Evolved. The prize pool was $30,000. Xeno Clan won the tourney, earning $9,000. The introduction of Halo permanently altered the face of competitive console gaming.

March 2005

• The CPL announced the CPL World Tour, with stops in Turkey, Brazil, Spain, Chile, Italy, Sweden, USA, UK, and Singapore. The game for the World Tour was Painkiller. Counter-Strike tournaments were often added to the World Tour stops as a companion to the Painkiller tournament, though it was not the official game of the World Tour.

November 2005

• The CPL World Tour Finals. It was held in New York City. This prize pool was far larger than any of the previous tournaments. There was only one tournament at this event and it was for Painkiller. The prize pool was $500,000. Fatal1ty defeated Vo0 in the grand finals and earned $150,000.

2006

• In 2006, when the Intel sponsored European tournament saw room for expansion outside of Europe, especially in the North American market, Intel provided funds for a worldwide tournament, billing it as the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM). In 2007, when established, the IEM created a format of many smaller qualifying events that occur around the world. The qualifiers from these tournaments will then participate in the much larger final event, the IEM Grand Finals. Games that have been played at IEM include Warcraft 3, Counter-Strike, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Quake Live, and StarCraft.

May 2007

• After a lackluster 2006 year for the CPL, it’s announced that there will be another CPL World Tour. The venues would occur in Italy, Sweden, USA, and UK.  The CPL had announced that for the 2007 World Tour the previous games were being replaced and that the games would be F.E.A.R., a 1v1 competition, and World in Conflict, a team based 5v5.

February 2008

• CPL World Tour Finals 2007. The event took place in London. This was also the last CPL event. The FEAR tournament had a $100,000 prize pool. The winner was Jagad, earning $30,000. The World in Conflict tournament had a $200,000 prize pool. The winner was Dignitas, earning $60,000.

August 2012

• Riot Games announced the formation of the LCS, thus creating a fully professional league run by the company with a regular schedule and guaranteed salaries for players, featuring eight teams in both North America and Europe. Since the LCS was only launched in the third year of professional play, it was immediately dubbed “Season 3”. At the same time leagues were also being created and announced by private, independent organizations throughout the world; including Korea, China, Taiwan, Australia, and Brazil.

May 2013

• A user reported that ESEA’s anti-cheat software was being used to mine bitcoins without the user’s consent. This was confirmed by ESEA’s co-founder Eric ‘lpkane’ Thunberg in two subsequent forum posts. As of the date of discovery, the claimed dollar value of bitcoins mined totaled $3,713.55. As of November 2013, ESEA has agreed to a US $1 million settlement, though a separate class action lawsuit is still ongoing.

April 2014

• MLG announced that it partnering with Lai Fung Holdings Limited (Lai Fung) and eSun Holdings Limited in building the MLG Arena on Hengqin Island in China, near Macau. The arena, which is scheduled to be completed in 2017, is part of the “Creative Culture City” development planned on Hengqin.

October 2014

• MLG opened the 14,000 square feet (1,300 m²) MLG.tv Arena in Columbus, Ohio. It is located near the Easton Town Center. The first event held at the arena was the Season 3 Call of Duty playoffs.

July 1, 2015

• Turtle Entertainment sold 74% of their stakes in the Electronic Sports League (ESL) to the Swedish media company Modern Times Group for 78,000,000€ (US$86 Million).

October 2015

• ESEA was acquired by Modern Times Group, which would later buy majority stakes in DreamHack as well.
• The League of Legends World Championship 2015 showed amazing potential for eSports. The finals were watched by 36 million people, with a peak concurrent viewership of 14 million viewers.

December 31, 2015

• Substantially all of MLG’s assets were acquired by Activision Blizzard for $46 million. Activision Blizzard operates its own in-house e-sports division, Activision Blizzard Media Networks, led by veteran sports television executive Steve Bornstein, MLG co-founder Mike Sepso, and its acquisition of assets from the defunct IGN Pro League. Activision Blizzard owns the Call of Duty and Starcraft franchises—which have been popular as eSports. Kotick explained to The New York Times that their eventual goal was to “build the ESPN of video games”—a television cable channel that would be devoted to e-sports coverage and analysis with “premium” in-house productions that could attract more major advertisers, either produced by Activision’s staff or by outside producers. Despite the acquisition, MLG will continue to host events relating to games that are not published by Activision Blizzard’s subsidiaries, like the MLG Major Championship: Columbus for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The Major is set to occur in March 2016.