All you need to know about E-sports 

What is E-Sports?

E-sports or electronic sports is a competitive sport played on-screen by professionals, and are awarded large sums of money at winning the tournaments. This was initially perpetrated by amateurs but later progressed to internationally recognized sports played by professional players.

The potential competitors of a particular game forming a league (sometimes solo player) plays against the opposite league in an arena or stadium among millions of spectators-the fan base. These are the same games we generally play at home, on our computers or play stations sitting lousily on a couch. Whereas in e-sports these games are played by professionally trained players, playing while sitting among millions of fans who are cheering for them and desperately wishing their favorite player to win. These sports events are packed with world class brands and sponsors along high profile media coverage and publications. Eventually, bringing in unavoidable attention and massive revenues.

How e-sports evolved?

E-sports was first played and organized at Stanford University by the campus students in 1972. Spacewar was the first game ever played at a higher competitive level. However, second on the list is Space Invaders Championship that had 10,000 fans as audience and acquired media attention too. With the arrival of internet in 1990s, the global connectivity bring gamers closer and contributed inevitable growth in video gaming competitiveness. The tournament of the famous ‘Quake game’ was marked as the first e-sport competition. As we embraced the new millennium it brought us deeper into videogame tournaments, some of them are Major League Gaming (awarded largest sum of money as prize to the winners till date), defense of the Ancients (Dota), and League of Legends.

Monetization in gaming industry presented e-sports to the viewers and stakeholders more lucratively. By the year 2023 it is estimated to make business more than $1.5 billion.

Where can you watch e-sports tournaments?

  • Online

The live streaming of e-sports tournaments can be viewed at youtube and twitch, the two major streamers of sports events worldwide. The easier streaming however plays an efficient role in maintaining the interest of the fans across the globe. Counter-Strike Global Offensive and Rocket League are on the list of the official channels with high profile tournament coverage.

  • Television

E-sports has also been on-aired on television for past six years. Some of them are ESPNU, ESPN Deportes, DisneyXD and TBS. Lately, in-person experience of the tournaments have been compromised for safety purpose against coronavirus pandemic.

Who can play?

Anybody can be part of e-sports. The players are nominated regardless of their, age, region and education. Basically video gaming is part of teens life and usually e-sport players are young below 30. Young and enthusiastic players are seen with high achievement, energy and success. Mostly the professionals prep themselves around 6-10 hours a day before tournaments.

Popular teams and players

Team Liquid, Fnatic, OG, Evil Geniuses, Faze Clan, Virtus, Newbee and Cloud 9 are the top e-sport teams that had won number of tournaments. However team liquid is on the top with highest amount of prize pool winner so far, they have won $36,026,710,19 in 1903 tournaments.

Lee Sang-hyeok (aka Faker), Jian Zi-Hao’s (aka Uzi), Song Eui-Jin (aka Rookie), Andreas Højsleth (aka Xyp9x), Nicolai Reedtz (aka dev1ce), Peter Rothmann Rasmussen (aka dupreeh), Felix Kjellberg (aka Pewdiepie), Preston Arsement (aka Preston) Lasse Aukusti Urpalainen (aka MATUMBAMAN), TylerBlevins (aka Ninja), Clement Ivanov (aka Puppey) and many others are the top players in e-sport world.

Popular e-sports games

Although there are numerous video games that are played globally in vast numbers some of them are League of Legends (LoL), Overwatch,  Counter-Strike, Defense of the Legends 2 (DOTA 2),  Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Fortnite, Super Smash Brothers, Call of Duty (CoD), Madden NFL, and Starcraft. Starcraft is listed amongst one of the classics still played today as it first came out in 1998.

Top tournaments and prize pool

The recent indicators for top e-sport tournaments of November 2020 by Statista along massive prize pool are 


A booming industry

E-sports has earned a major name in the business world as its market is higher than Hollywood. The gaming revenue is simply gigantic and going higher with every passing year. The competitive gaming is taking shape of highly profitable industry and generating each year revenue that is more than $120 billion. Its audience and/or fan base is huge then Major League Baseball.

Forbes, reported, ”E-sports is fast on its way to becoming the most financially lucrative market on the planet”. Nobody knew a past teenage leisure time activity would make its way to one of the highly developed and rewarding market. It is expected to generate revenue around $1.5 billion in 2023. As a matter of fact a number of recent studies have shown that people are connected conveniently via virtual world in the recent outbreak and video gaming has become increasingly integrated as part of leisure activities. These findings illustrate video gaming is not only a popular industry but also a promising business.

Can you make a career out of video gaming?

Video gaming is not merely game for fun anymore, it has broad and money-spinning prospects now, and even an established career is unquestionably possible. Being part of the gaming industry you could opt for the role of game producer, designer, programmer, audio engineer or video game artist.

Apart from these careers game tester and game critic or a professional player are also some of the adorable possibilities out of the career opportunities in e-sport industry.