ESPORTS

INCEPTION
The concept of playing video games as a sport for sizable prizing and exposure opportunities is a relatively new pheonomenon in regards to the scale it operates on now.
However, the concept of competing in the most popular titles/genres for prizes, pride, sake of competition, etc has been around since the internet itself.
The most popular esports titles today in terms of viewership, financial backing from organizations, player base, and international reach are in order:
League of Legends (widest reach, most viewed singular tournament {worlds}
Dota 2 [doe-tuh tew] (largest prize pool in singular tournament {The International - Prize pot $20,363,204 USD
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (most "competitive", most popular first person shooter, most consistent tournaments throughout the year)

Players of high enough skill, brand pressence, and experience (or any blend of the 3) are financially supported
by esports "orgs" {organizations obvy} that will salary these players, give them places to live and play at together (team houses/offices), give them brand exposure,
and generally make the concept of esports-for-a-living possible for players. These orgs are generally backed by very wealthy investors, commonly with sports backgrounds themselves (ex: Shaq owning NRG, Drake ownership in 100T, lots of NBA/baseball plyaers involved now)
They are sustainable through ad revenue on their products as well as their players' personal streams/videos/general content, sales of merchandise, cuts of prize winnings, and a few other menial ways.


In late 2013/2014, as more and more people gravitated towards the internet in hopes of finding an experience more involved and rewarding hobby, whether that be practicing to compete in esports themselves, or,
much more commonly, to view the best of the best play and practice regularly on streaming services such as Twitch.
Around this time, a lot of the people who were involved in esports watched the first initial sizable investments consistently going into their respectives games/scenes.
Not only in just bigger and bigger tournaments with bigger prize pots, but organizations first started getting their first real investments to build their company with around this time.
Around this time a lot of people considered the growth of esports to be a "bubble" - that is to say, that all of this money was just coming in for now, and that people will soon realize that there isnt a place for long-term careers in esports, whether that is a competitor, investor, owner, or otherwise.
However, the facts are that more and more people are straying away from their televisions and putting themselves and their loved ones around something that garners much more passion. As the concept of esports in general garnered more respect and staying power, investors came from increasingly diverse backgrounds,
and with a LOT more consistent money.

Fast forward to 2019, esports is still about a year or two away from it's biggest "boom" in my opinion. I've seen rumblings of true esports investments as early as 2009 with things such as the CGS (a failed project to bring video games to TV, much too early and without the right people or infrastructure behind it)
However, it's multi-billion dollar growth in the last couple years has brought forth some questionable characters who do not have the best intentions for esports, and are rather concerned with seeing the biggest return on their investment.
The thing that makes esports unique is that it is passion-driven; while it will always need investors and fans to generate revenue for these investors, of course, it has an uncanny self-sustaining way of preventing those who are not genuine characters and those who do not truly understand the nuances of esports will generally not be successful.
There's a lot to be said about the concept of running an esports org as a business, they see some of the quickest, largest profit margins out of any business in the world when successful, and because esports is again, passio-driven, even players not on specific top orgs have the ability to "chase the dream" so to speak due to the support of smaller orgs which are still sustainable business models since esports has cemented such a foothold in the world at this point.

///ANECDOTAL

Hi Paula I'm Shawn. I was in your smart classes by virtue of placing well on standardized tests, but generally not much more than that.
Why am I telling this to you? Because the rationale for this is because I was never in school and never committed to school the way
I was to esports. I've been playing Counter-strike since I was 10 (im 23 now, so 13 years with only a year break). When I played,
in the older iterations of the game (counter-strike: source for reference) there was little to no money, viewership, anything. It was a closed,
niche community that innately knew it was going to be viewed negatively at that time. As such, it wasn't until the birth of the new
Counter-Strike (CSGO, the one I play now for lots of $$), combined with some uncanny timing and the birth of Korean League of Legends/Dota2 in other countries (Korea, Russia, China, for these games mainly)
that gave the best players enough runway to justify playing the game fulltime (ie this is when the money kinda started to come in for the TOP TOP TOP)

So anyways yeah I'm sitting here playing CSS althroughout high school and middle school. I knew there was money to be made, and I had a feeling
that down the line the concept of what I was doing would blow up just by the sheer awesome nature of it - come on, its a sport that doesnt hurt me,
makes me smarter, generates leadership skills and promoting teamwork, from my computer. In my head when I was 14-16 there was no way there wasnt
SOMETHING there.

SHO'NUFF I was right, and after competiting in lower divisions and in smaller esports organizations, I ended up securing a spot for myself
on one of the first three pure e-sports orgs ever (Complexity, Formed 2006? maybe 2004 IDK)
It was a dream come true to me, they put me on my first airplane ever and got me out of my abusive household. This should be noted on, for myselfand a lot of
people they find themselves competing in Counter-Strike to either tune out the noise of their household as a kid, or because they got injured in their own sport and
NEEDED some sort of outlet for their competitive drive. In any case, I stayed in a gaming "house" (it was closer to a compound) in a very wealthy part of Houston TX.
Mind you I come from a dirt poor grass-roots family and so for me to have my own shot at life through esports out of nowhere was huge and a huge cultureshock to me

I signed on my 19th birthday for two years, for a salary right below six figures guaranteed, which was on the higher end for esports orgs around the time I was signed.
It came with benefits, a 401k, everything -- that is to say, even at the start of the first "boom", I could tell that this was the equivalent to companies in other sectors/businesses.
I traveled around the world frequently, after team practice, competiting in tournaments in places like E-League at Turner Studios in Atlanta, Barclay's NY, ETC, team practice, individual training, streaming to keep a connection with the community and manage my own brand,
I was working roughly between 90-110 hours a week (invidiually) for about two years. I wasn't by any means the best, but I was a notable player and in CS, North America was long considered
a weak region, so by comparison's sake it was regarded that I had a lot of potential long term.

As much as the benefits were worth it to me, I decided that after working so much for so long, that the reasons I had played in the first place were no longer the reasons I was playing now. My heart wasn't in it to compete for anymore, hell I literally have a cumulative total of ~16,00 hours logged across both iterations of CS,
which is aproximately TWO years of my young life committed to competing in counter-strike, for millions or for pennies-to-nothing. Now I work on the back end of esports with an event direction company, as well as instruct new players and teams coming up in the now VASTLY oversaturated scene.

Now that theres so much money and exposure and fame to be had, we're seeing a lot of new talent and faces in the scene which is a great thing for diversity and competition, but not so great for integrity and genuine intention in some cases. Like I said before though, esports has an uncanny way of working these people out on it's own overtime,
meaning that along with people like me who were around since before anyone even knew what an esport was, the sanctity and purity of competition within in esports/the people that finance it are generally in a good place moving forward

I feel like I typed a lot but not at all either. I want to help you more, because the integration of esports into other things is becoming increasingly common AND profitable, so I'd like to keep as many of these network streams open as possible.

Let me know what was good, bad, and what more you need, and I got you. Wrote this in like 25 minutes on my break