The world of eSports has grown alongside the Internet, evolving with technological advances in consoles and computers. Competitions that were once limited to an arcade now take centre stage in huge arenas, and streaming has meant that even more fans can watch their favourite teams play around the world.
Not more than a decade ago, there were serious doubts that competitive gaming could reach the level of a traditional sporting event, certainly nothing as momentous as the Super Bowl. But when the numbers show that a simple mid-season Invitational, not even a championship event, was only 30,000,000 short of the Super Bowl, most doubts begin to fade.
And when a single eSports event is held in a packed stadium with a capacity of 173,000 people, while the 2019 Super Bowl venue held 75,000, all doubt is gone.
Some eSports events have been especially huge and bear witness to the popularity of eSports. Here is a list of the 5 biggest events in eSports history.
1) # 5 League of Legends World Championship 2015
Date : 01/10/15 - 31/10/15
Location : Paris, London, Brussels and Berlin
Live attendance : 43,000
Online viewers in total : 36,000,000
Prize pool : $ 2,130,000
This list starts with an event watched by 36,000,000 unique viewers for a total of 386,000,000 hours watched. This particular championship broke viewership records, but has since been surpassed; nevertheless, it was an important milestone in the growth of eSports.
From 1 October 2015 to 31 October 2015, Riot Games held its fifth World Championship in Paris, London, Brussels and Berlin. There were 16 teams competing on League of Legends Patch 5.18, all ready to claim the $ 2,130,000 prize.
In Paris, the competition took place at the venue called 'Le Dock Pullman'; in London, the 'SSE Arena Wembley'; in Brussels, the 'Brussels Expo'; in Berlin, the 'Mercedes-Benz Arena'. All of them together drew an attendance of 43,000 spectators.
The event was widely broadcast, with 550,000 Twitch views on the Riot Games channel, 240,000 YouTube views on the Riot Games channel there, and 30,000 YouTube views on the New Viewers Stream, an excellent resource for the less informed.
14,000,000 viewers tuned in to the final match to see SK Telecom T1 take the victory and the grand prize. From that team, Top Laner MaRin was named most valuable player.
2) # 4 CFS World Championship 2017
Date : 11/30/17 - 12/03/17
Venue : Xi'an
Live attendance : Unstated
Online viewers : 37000000
Prize pool : $ 850,000
The next one is an event that drew 37,000,000 unique viewers for a total of 6,537,068 hours watched. Two years after its predecessor on this list, this event had its roots in China and most of its audience was domestic.
At the Xi'an Gymnasium in Xi'an, 12 teams fought for a prize pool of $ 850,000. They played Crossfire, an online first-person shooter for PC created by the South Korean developer SmileGate, from 30 November 2017 to 3 December 2017.
18,394 Twitch viewers were among the many who witnessed the Chinese team Super Valiant Gaming win it all. In fact, the vast majority of viewers were domestic. The peak for Chinese platforms was 914,182 views, while English platforms yielded a peak of 323 and Russian platforms only 133 views.
3) # 3 League of Legends World Championship 2016
Date : 29/09/16 - 29/10/16
Location : San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles
Live attendance : 47,268
Online viewers : 43,000,000
Prize pool : $ 5,070,000
A year before placeholder no. 4, RiotGames once again broke records with its 43,000,000 unique viewers and 370,000,000 total hours watched. Compared with the 2015 World Championship, there is a difference of 9,000,000 viewers, an incredible jump for the ESL.
This event toured the United States, starting and ending on the west coast between 29 September 2016 and 29 October 2016. The standard 16 teams faced each other on version 6.18 of the game, competing for that $ 5,070,000 prize pool with passion and determination.
These tournaments took place in well-established venues, starting with the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, then the Chicago Theatre in the Windy City, then Madison Square Garden in New York, and finally the Staples Center in Los Angeles. All those venues combined drew a total of 47,268 spectators.
As for the audience, the maximum concurrent audience was around 14,700,000 with the overall peak at 28,263,260 views. In addition, the Twitch peak reached 971,092 views; quite an audience for the SK Telecom T1 team to bring home the gold again.
4) # 2 Intel Extreme Masters Katowice 2017
Date : 25/02/17 - 26/02/17; 03/03/17 - 03/05/17
Venue : Katowice, Poland
Live attendance : 173,000
Online viewers : 46,000,000
Prize : $ 250,000
Sponsored by Intel, the silver medallist of this list was the biggest event in eSports history, and everyone involved in running it expressed immense pride and joy at being underrated as an epic event. Surpassing number 3 by a few million, this championship drew 46,000,000 unique viewers and racked up a total of 19,744,073 hours watched.
Unlike the usual single-game championship, Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Katowice held competitions for three: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CSGO), League of Legends and StarCraft II. CSGO is a first-person shooter for PC, known for its fast and highly tactical gameplay; it is a very popular game in the eSports genre. StarCraft II, a child of Blizzard Entertainment, stands out from the other games with its non-team real-time strategy gameplay. In other words, it is a game where foresight and advance planning are a necessity, more than a mere advantage.
In the Spodak Arena, packed with 173,000 spectators, 12 teams took part in the event for the surprisingly small prize of $ 250,000. The Polish city where this event took place, Katowice, was flooded with eSports fans on two separate weekends: from 25 February 2017 to 26 February 2016; 3 March 2017 to 5 March 2017.
The bright lights and the many new technologies displayed by Intel only added to the excitement and entertainment of those who attended the event, but viewers at home were not left out of the fun. 444,339 peak Twitch viewers and 724,317 peak total viewers were also able to admire the latest and best from Intel.
The CSGO team Astralis came out on top as champions, but what made this event so extraordinary was that there was no single winner. There were three. In the League of Legends competition, the Flash Wolves took the victory; in StarCraft II, the glory of victory went to Jun "TY" Tae Yang.
5) # 1 LoL Mid-Season Invitational 2018
Date : 03/05/18 - 20/05/18
Location : Adlershof and Paris
Live attendance :> 7,000
Online viewers : 60,000,000
Prize : $ 1,370,520
At last, the champion of this list, the biggest eSports event in history, is not even a championship! With 60,000,000 unique viewers, this Round Robin invitational is 'exhibit A' for the popularity of eSports. This event alone produced 2,077,897,606 total hours watched. Two. Billion. Hours. That is incredibly massive, and so is the world of eSports.
At Riot European Studios in Adlershof, Germany and Le Zénith in Paris, France, 14 teams competed on version 8.8 of League of Legends. This event drew 448,451 peak Twitch viewers, 426,296 peak YouTube viewers and an average concurrent audience of 24,590,504. Anywhere the internet reached, someone could watch the event.
This huge event ran from 3 May 2018 to 20 May 2018. In the end, the prize pool was $ 1,370,520 and the RNG team finished first. The prize pool was disappointing given the magnitude of the event as a whole, but it makes sense that an invitational pool is not as strong as a pool for a championship.
5.1) More about the growth of the eSports world
Video game sales revenue in the United States
2014 = $ 41,000,000,000
2015 = $ 61,000,000,000
2016 = $ 99,600,000,000
2017 = $ 108,900,000,000
2018 = $ 135,000,000,000
In 2018, Major League Baseball (MLB) stood at the pinnacle of the list of professional sports leagues by revenue at $ 10,300,000,000. Also in 2018, video game revenue came out at around $ 120,000,000,000 more than MLB.
An important reason why the world of video games eclipses the world of baseball is that it is a natural component of technology and innovation, which is rapidly proliferating. Video games are effortlessly marketable products, perfect for sponsors because of their innovative popularity among younger generations.
5.1.1) The Super Bowl
In 2019, the Super Bowl received an estimated 98,200,000 unique viewers and filled the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta with 75,000 people.
The year before that, the League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational received approximately 60,000,000 unique viewers. Le Zénith, the multipurpose arena in France, has a capacity of 6,293 people.
It is interesting to see that comparison because it shows the well-founded prevalence that traditional sports have. Of course, eSports are looking to swim in the same pool, not to push out those who were there before them.
In terms of attendance, not much can be deduced from this comparison; an invitational will have significantly lower attendance than a championship. And the 2018 Mid-Season Invitational is comparable to the NFL championship.
In this particular pairing, there is a parallel in marketability. The Super Bowl is famous for its ads, and more specifically, it is known for the win-win-win nature of its marketing. Advertising brands win more, the NFL wins more than it can give back to the Super Bowl to improve it, and viewers are usually very entertained.
5.1.2) Future facilities
To grow, there has to be room. UCI understands this and has built an arena on campus for its eSports team. That is a wonderfully progressive move, and there is a good chance that other schools, probably those with more successful and prominent teams first, will be inspired by this and follow UCI's lead. ESports is starting to be considered a real sport, and just like athletes, players need a place to train and a place to play.
Do not expect other schools to set aside large portions of property for this effort yet, but there is great hope for future housing of college eSports teams.
Las Vegas If it is flashy and vibrant, it can be found in Las Vegas. What is more visually stimulating than video games? That is why it is no surprise that the city has built its own high-end eSports and “high-tech nightlife” arena, equipped with all the aesthetic pleasures it is infamous for.
However, the eSports arena was not built just for aesthetics; this is a strategic move. The deeper insights that eSports are have proven to be cash machines with great promise for the future. The arena will serve the purposes of many of the city's other notable buildings: gambling.
Sports betting is a well-endowed market because of its intimacy and universality. That is, it is done between people who are close, but as long as human beings compete against each other, there have been others who have bet on one or the other in a test of foresight. ESports will not be much different, if at all.
As popularity grows, value is affirmed. When value is affirmed, that allows it to increase. The world of eSports is pubescent, rapidly becoming a more mature phenomenon. A very good sign that it is something worth investing in for the future is the niche it remains in despite its gross revenue and growing notoriety. It is creating its own submarket, in a way.
The bottom line: annual increases in audience, sponsorship and revenue only give positive projections for the future of competitive gaming