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The Rise of Esports Esports: on the rise. Revenue: through the roof. Popularity: skyrocketing.
Story by Rhiannon Drysdale
What sport do the Boston Uprising or the Houston Outlaws play? Trick
question. Without being in the know, someone might guess something like basketball, soccer, or maybe even hockey. They would, however, be wrong. Fans of these two teams know that both are a part of the Overwatch League, one of several esports leagues on the rise with esports themselves.
Esports teams are not actually all that different from their better-known counterparts, minus the fact that they play video games instead. A few years ago, nobody knew—or cared—about what esports were. Now, the industry is projected to be worth over a billion dollars by next year. Compared to the regular sports industry with a worth of over seventy billion, that may not seem
like much, and it is not—yet.
The world is changing. Technology
has advanced to a level that the people of yesterday could hardly dream of, and with it comes new forms of entertainment. Esports is small compared to traditional sports such as football and basketball, but it has grown fast in a very short time, and is projected to grow even more. In the future, it may even come to eclipse its predecessors.
Fans of traditional sports are often partial to sports they play themselves, or did in the past—or, in the case of ‘armchair quarterbacks’, sports they know how to play. The same often applies with esports. Avid players of, for example, League of Legends or Dota 2 are more likely to favor tournaments within their respective games.
The crucial difference, then, between esports and traditional sports is that
of mind over muscle. Despite that, esports athletes train just as much if not more than regular ones, by playing the games they compete in and practicing complex strategies far in advance of usage. In that respect, athletes are just athletes—regardless of what they play and whether their greatest asset is their running speed or how fast their trigger finger is.
Athletes are just athletes. Considering that, it is very possible that someday soon, esports athletes may find themselves receiving paychecks comparable to that of LeBron James or Cristiano Ronaldo. Perhaps ESPN will begin to broadcast the League of Legends World Championship alongside the Super Bowl. Entertainment is changing as the world does, and esports stands at the very brink of becoming a major player in the entertainment industry of the future.
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