eSports or Electronic sports are the type of sports competitions that takes place on online platforms. The contestants can be both professional video game players and amateur individuals. It is an organized event that, most of the time, involves a significant number of players. Until the late 2010s, these type of competitions were mainly played by amateur players. Though, recently, professionals became interested in the matter through the rise of spectatorship and live-streaming. eSports are very important for video gamers, and the overall industry as most of the major video game developers use these tournaments as promotions and fund contests.
Multiple types of video games and genres are used in eSports, but most common ones are:
FPS- First Person Shooter games
Fighting
Battle Royales
MOBA- Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games
Card Games
Several franchises are very successful and popular for eSports. For example, Super Smash Bros, Counter-Strike, Dota, League of Legends, and StarCraft are among them. The most popular competitions that involve those games are:
Dota 2’s International
World Championship: League of Legends
Intel Extreme Masters
eSports may seem as not legit as other sports events and competitions. Still, the scope of the contest is enormous, and even the International Olympic Committee discussed a matter which can lead those competitions into future Olympic events.
It is estimated that the revenue from these competitions is over $1 billion for the past decade. The size of the audience that watches these games is impressive, and the live streaming factor leads to growth. The platforms like Twitch and YouTube can be considered as the central part of these events as most of the professional players use those platforms in order to live stream their gameplay. China and South Korea are the two main destinations where the popularity of eSports is enormously high.