Video gaming is one of the most popular activities in the world. Players of all ages engage in this activity every single day, playing games of many different genres both on their own as well as with other players. Some of these players have become extremely good at playing games, and because of that, they are starting to become celebrities in the world of gaming. Through e-sports competitions, professional gamers travel all over the world and make a lot of money just from doing what they love.
The e-sports community is getting bigger every year. Professional gamers are almost as popular as professional athletes, and e-sports tournaments sell as many tickets as traditional sporting events. Certain tournaments, such as FIFA or League of Legends, attract a lot more people than other tournaments, but there are dozens of events taking place all over the world every single year. In some events, the game participants compete in are not as popular, but they are still relatively commercial. Fighting games such as Tekken and Killer Instinct keep spectators on their toes as they want to see the world’s best players compete against each other.
E-Sports Is an Activity with Many Faces
When many hear the word e-sports, they normally think of games such as FIFA or such as NBA 2K, but the truth is that e-sports are a lot more than that. Playing MMORPGs is a form of an electronic sport activity, and in most role-playing games, there is not even one mention of an actual sport. Something similar applies to online games of chance. Casino games, such as the ones released by big-name developers as Red Tiger Gaming, are just as “dramatic” as the games players normally categorise as e-sports. Winning a bonus feature, for example, can be just as fun as winning a map round in e-sports. Apart from online casino games and from MMORPGs, e-sports have another online gaming subcategory. This category concerns the wagering on the outcome of major FIFA, LoL, DOTA, and 2K events. Players from all over the world pick the team they want to win and then wait for the gaming professionals to perform well and win the tournament.
South Korea – A Hub for Elite Professional Gamers
In South Korea, e-sports gamers live very luxurious lives, as their teams spare no expense in order to give them everything they will need. The “cream of the crop” players for games such as League of Legends have long-term contracts that reward them with pretty decent salaries and with a lot of bonuses. These players travel all over the world and represent their teams against other elite players. The prizes, both for the players as well as for the teams, are pretty big, and the bigger the audience gets, the bigger the cheques become. The major tournaments are sponsored by businesses with really deep pockets and slowly but steadily, e-sports are starting to generate just as much money as traditional professional sports.
E-Sports Are Still in their Infancy Stage
Over the last fifteen years, e-sports have taken giant leaps forward, but as an activity, they are still in the first stages of their life cycle. This industry is going to become just as big as normal sports, but for the time being, there are issues, which the organisers have to improve, in order to avoid mishaps such as the discontinuation of the Smash World Tour. The disputes between Nintendo and the organisers of the tour, led to the termination of a tournament, which had more than 320 thousand contestants from all over the world and which had millions of viewers.
