E-sports or competitive gaming has seen colossal growth in the past few years. For example, the immensely popular game called League of Legends recently hosted its Worlds Championship last October. The tournament was held in the Staples Center and it was completely sold out. Millions of people watched live on the web. The event had over 32 million people watching with 8.5 million people watching concurrently. This is a short HBO documentary covering the event and its background.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMh2b_n7cKw

E-Sports is massively successfully at the moment, but a decade ago, it was not doing so well. Access to live tournaments was just non-existent. The proper platforms to deliver the content to the masses were not in place. Thus, E-sports had nowhere close to the number of viewers to traditional sports. Traditional sports had their channels on television. Back then, the only way you could watch the competitive scene for your favorite game, was to be at the tournament itself. This was just not feasible for the majority of people.

Recently, appropriate platforms that would deliver this media live came into existence. Websites like Twitch, Ustream, and Youtube have made it possible to give consumers access to this media live, without actually being at the event. This allowed E-sports to get to where it is today. Where do you think E-sports will be in the next 5 years? If events started charging money for viewing, would you pay to watch?