Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel ran an episode on E-Sports. I didn't know about it until my dad came to me in complete shock. He could not believe a video game sold out the Staples Center in less than 10 minutes. He knows close to nothing about computers and technology, barely can work an iPhone, but even I was in complete shock when I heard this.
The episode started off with a college-drop who dropped out to move to Korea to become a professional League of Legends player. Commonly referred to as LoL, League of Legends is the fastest growing sport in the world. William Li, gamer tag "Scarra", lives in a house with his professional LoL team. He was getting ready to attend the League of Legends World Championship at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. LoL is the fastest growing and most played video game and is becoming recognized as a sport to many. Even the United States has accepted it as a sport as it provides visas for players to come here with athletic visas. The sport is kicking off around the world and is similar to any other sport at every level. People like Scarra give up their lives including a 20 year old who rents his parents house with his friends to train to be professional LoL players. LoL is run by Riot Games and pays people to play their game. They pay professional teams a regular pay check if they win their event. On top of the regular pay check these teams and players receive money from websites to practice online and stream their game. This way they can teach other players some tricks. Within minutes of Scarra's live practice 700 viewers were watching his every move. Combine all their other profit opportunities with big tournament purse money and these games are well into 6 figures.
After watching this I was even more surprised. I've been debating over whether or not I feel it is a sport and have come to the conclusion that I feel it is. The game has professional competition, it requires extreme skill, it requires strategy, and just about every other aspect as a regular sport besides the fact that you stay in one place. I'm not sure that I would ever find it interesting to watch someone play a game regularly but I definitely could see people paying money to go watch professionals play a video game.
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