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As the world becomes more technologically advanced, we find new ways to compete against each other for glory. With “real” sports it is Major Leagues such as Major League Baseball, or National Football League. Major Leagues have invested in esports due to growing popularity, increased market value and numerous games to compete in. Electronic Sports, better known as esports, has been increasing in popularity. According to Newzoo in 2017, there was an estimated 2.2 billion people who are gamers (McDonald, 2017). With this figure in mind, we can grasp why Major Leagues are finding a new home in esports. With 2.2 billion people, this comes with a large market for potential sales and advertisement. This caught the attention of some well-known now retired players from the NBA, MLB, and the NFL.
Overwatch League
First, let’s get an example of what an esports organization looks like. Overwatch, being a popular video game of over 40 million players world-wide (Statista, 2018). This brought huge amount of attention from well-known players and owners of multiple organizations. Last year, Overwatch created a yearly event, much like NBA’s seasons, called Overwatch League. A total of 12 teams compete for glory and of course, money. The prize pool for Overwatch League in the 2017 – 2018 season was US$3.5 million. This caught the attention of major organizations. NRG Esports purchased their spot in the league with the name of San Francisco Shock. NRG Esports was established by Andy Miller who is the co-owner of the Sacramento Kings NBA team. Numerous investors flocked to get a piece of this ownership. Shaquille O’Neal, Alex Rodriguez and Jimmy Rollins all invested in NRG (NRG Esports, 2018).
Formation of Esports
Esports has been a competition since the early 2000s, but it wasn’t until 2010 where it became internationally adopted. The first ever esports event was the World Cyber Games and the Electronic Sports World Cup (Tyler Edwards, 2013). Major competitions like DoTA 2’s The International, League of Legends’ Worlds, and Counter-Strike’s numerous events like ESL Pro League and ELEAGUE Major brought large amounts of prize pools and spectators from around the world. In 2018 the international, a yearly esports event brought in a total of $25.5 million prize pool funded by the game’s community. There has been 8 The International tournaments bringing in $106.5 million total prize pools (Esports Earnings 2018). The formation of esports has been a rough road but has straightened out due to profound organizations and game developing companies.

Market Value
As there are a huge amount of video games that can be used for competing, getting the true market value is a difficult task and is not exact numbers. These numbers do not include the amateur side of esports, local tournaments between small organizations and other small events. According to Statista, esports is expected to reach a total market value of $906 million by the end of 2018 and growing to $1.5 billion by 2020. The market value has increased from $130 million to now $906 million. This gives us an understanding on how much esports has grown in 5 years.