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117-619: The Pacific Championship Series ( PCS ) is a professional esports league for League of Legends teams competing in the Asia-Pacific . Riot Games , the game's developer, created the league in 2019. This followed an announcement by Garena  – the game's distributor in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Southeast Asia – that it planned to merge the League of Legends Master Series (LMS) and League of Legends SEA Tour (LST) into

234-423: A mind sport . Former ESPN president John Skipper described esports in 2014 as a competition and "not a sport". In 2013 on an episode of Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel the panelist openly laughed at the topic. In addition, many in the fighting games community maintain a distinction between their competitive gaming competitions and the more commercially connected esports competitions of other genres. In

351-562: A salary cap in an effort to maintain a level of parity between franchises. Football in England developed a very different system from that in North America, and it has been adopted for football in most other European countries, as well as to many other sports founded in Europe and played across the world. The features of the system are: European football clubs are members both of a league and of

468-400: A closed membership system and do not have promotion and relegation . It is organized in a way that assures the teams' continued existence in the league from year to year. On occasion a league may decide to grow by admitting a new expansion team into the league. Most of the teams in the four major North American leagues were created as part of a planned league expansion or through the merger of

585-633: A club in the top league until a local club plays well enough to be promoted into the Premiership. Famously, the French Ligue 1 lacked a team from Paris, France's capital and largest city, for some years. Likewise, Berlin clubs in the Bundesliga have been rare, due to the richer clubs being all located in the former West Germany. As well as having no right to being in a certain tier, a club also has no territorial rights to its own area. A successful new team in

702-600: A few differences varying from country to country. A similar situation exists in countries in Central America and the Caribbean, where football and baseball share several close markets. A major factor in the development of the North American closed membership system during the 19th Century was the distances between cities, with some teams separated by half of the North American continent, resulting in high traveling costs. When

819-714: A geographical location can come to dominate the incumbents. In Munich , for example, TSV 1860 München were initially more successful than the city's current biggest team Bayern München . As of the current 2024–25 season, London has 13 teams in the top four league levels , including seven Premier League teams. Clubs may be sold privately to new owners at any time, but this does not happen often where clubs are based on community membership and agreement. Such clubs require agreement from members who, unlike shareholders of corporations, have priorities other than money when it comes to their football club such as tradition or local identity. For similar reasons, relocation of clubs to other cities

936-456: A given season compete in a tournament, with the winner being crowned champion of the league for that season. These have their roots in the long travel distances common in US and Canadian sports; to cut down on travel, leagues are typically divided into geographic divisions and feature unbalanced schedules with teams playing more matches against opponents in the same division. Due to this, not all teams face

1053-616: A governing body. In the case of England, all competitive football clubs are members of The Football Association , while the top 20 teams also are members of the Premier League , a separate organization. The 72 teams in the three levels below the Premier League are members of still another body, the English Football League . The FA operates the national football team and tournaments that involve teams from different leagues (except

1170-487: A high ranked club in their native city must buy a local club as it stands and work it up through the divisions, usually by hiring better talent. There have been some cases where existing owners have chosen to relocate out of a difficult market, to better facilities, or to realize the market value of the land that the current stadium is built upon (A famous example being the Relocation of Wimbledon F.C. to Milton Keynes ). As in

1287-667: A high score record-keeping organization. The organization went on to help promote video games and publicize its records through publications such as the Guinness Book of World Records, and in 1983 it created the U.S. National Video Game Team . The team was involved in competitions, such as running the Video Game Masters Tournament for Guinness World Records and sponsoring the North American Video Game Challenge tournament. A multicity tour in 1983,

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1404-424: A large market, the law raised concerns about the future of esports within the country. Labeling competitive video games as a sport is a controversial topic. Proponents argue that esports are a fast-growing "non-traditional sport" which requires "careful planning, precise timing, and skillful execution". Others claim that sports involve physical fitness and physical training, and prefer to classify esports as

1521-532: A major league team, or affiliated with one, and utilized for player development. For example, Major League Baseball operates Minor League Baseball . The minor clubs do not move up or down in the hierarchy by on-field success or failure. Professional ice hockey has a system somewhat similar to baseball's (without as many levels), while the National Basketball Association operates a single NBA G League . The National Football League does not have

1638-595: A marketing stunt to promote their early arcade snake game Hustle in the United States, involving the "Gremlin Girls" who were a duo of professional female arcade players called Sabrina Osment and Lynn Reid. The pair travelled across 19 American cities, where players could challenge them in best-of-three matches for a chance to win money. The duo were challenged by a total of 1,300 players, only about seven of whom managed to beat them. The golden age of arcade video games

1755-457: A medal event at the 2022 edition ; esports around games such as Hearthstone , Starcraft II , and League of Legends were presented as an exhibition event at the 2018 Asian Games as a lead-in to the 2022 games. The 2019 Southeast Asian Games included six medal events for esports. Since 2018, World Sailing has held an eSailing World Championship that showed a main sports federation embracing esports. The Virtual Regatta race shadowing

1872-501: A minor league system as of 2024 but it has operated or affiliated with minor leagues in the 1930s , 1940s , 1960s , 1990s , and the early 2000s and invested in one in the late 2000s . Men's soccer has multiple minor leagues. The United Soccer League operates two of these, the second-level USL Championship and the third-level USL League One . Major League Soccer operates the third-level MLS Next Pro , consisting primarily of reserve sides of MLS teams. Another third-level league,

1989-559: A new partnership with their National Olympic Committee . The proposal was ultimately approved by a unanimous vote on 23 July 2024. A number of games are popular among professional competitors. The tournaments which emerged in the mid-1990s coincided with the popularity of fighting games and first-person shooters , genres which still maintain a devoted fan base. In the 2000s, real-time strategy games became overwhelmingly popular in South Korean internet cafés , with crucial influence on

2106-565: A paid television model renamed GIGA II from June 2006 to autumn 2007. The French channel Game One broadcast esports matches in a show called Arena Online for the Xfire Trophy. The United States channel ESPN2 hosted Madden NFL competitions in a show called Madden Nation from 2005 to 2008. DirecTV broadcast the Championship Gaming Series tournament for two seasons in 2007 and 2008. CBS aired prerecorded footage of

2223-882: A part of video game culture , but were largely between amateurs until the late 2000s, when the advent of online streaming media platforms, particularly YouTube and Twitch , enabled a surge in participation by professional gamers and spectators. By the 2010s, esports was a major part of the video game industry, with many game developers designing for and funding for tournaments and other events. Esports first became popular in East Asia , particularly in China and South Korea (which first licensed professional players in 2000) but less so in Japan , whose broad anti-gambling laws prohibit professional gaming tournaments. Esports are also popular in Europe and

2340-569: A part of the PCS region in 2022, with the League of Legends Circuit Oceania (LCO) being downgraded to a tier-two league secondary to the PCS. Japan followed suit the next year, with the League of Legends Japan League being similarly downgraded and integrated into the PCS. Riot Games announced in 2024 that the League of Legends Championship Pacific (LCP) would replace the PCS as the Asia-Pacific's tier-one league from 2025 onward. The PCS, along with

2457-461: A playoff tournament of the teams that finished third through sixth. In the 2011–12 season, the teams Wolverhampton Wanderers , Blackburn , and Bolton were relegated to the Championship. They were replaced by Reading , Southampton , and West Ham . The two former teams had won automatic promotion, while the latter occupied the last promotion spot when they defeated Cardiff 5–0 on aggregate in

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2574-529: A potential method to legitimize esports. A summit held by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in October 2017 acknowledged the growing popularity of esports, concluding that "Competitive 'esports' could be considered as a sporting activity, and the players involved prepare and train with an intensity which may be comparable to athletes in traditional sports" but would require any games used for

2691-636: A rival league. Only one team in the National Hockey League (the Montreal Canadiens ), for example, existed before becoming part of the NHL. The rest of the teams were created ex novo as expansion teams or as charter members of the World Hockey Association , which merged with the NHL in 1979. American and Canadian sports leagues typically have a " playoff " system where the best teams in

2808-425: A single tournament jointly run with Riot Games. Initially, ten teams competed in the regular season, but this was reduced to eight teams in the 2024 spring season and finally seven in the 2024 summer season. In its final year of tier-one competition, the top six teams from the PCS regular season advanced to the playoffs and were joined by the top three teams from Japan and the top two teams from Oceania. Oceania became

2925-505: A tournament held by several video game publishers to award prizes to many players but with JeSU offering these exemption licenses to the top dozen or so players that emerge, allowing them to compete in further esports events. The Tokyo Olympic Committee has also planned to arrange a number of esports events leading up to the 2020 games. With the IOC, five esports events were set as part of an Olympic Virtual Series from 13 May to 23 June 2021, ahead of

3042-442: Is a single business entity, with each team owner-operator being a league shareholder, and all player contracts are held by the league. Also similar to MLS, MLR uses playing rules set by its sport's international governing body. However, MLR teams do not play competitive matches against teams from other leagues, and there is currently no cup competition in U.S. rugby similar to soccer's U.S. Open Cup. The MLR league structure also follows

3159-583: Is also thought that the high unemployment rate at the time caused many people to look for things to do while out of work. Instrumental to this growth of esports in South Korea was the prevalence of the Komany-style internet café / LAN gaming center , known as a PC bang . The Korean e-Sports Association , an arm of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism , was founded in 2000 to promote and regulate esports in

3276-406: Is generally used to determine membership of leagues. Most commonly, a pre-determined number of teams that finish at the bottom of a league or division are automatically dropped down, or relegated, to a lower level for the next season. They are replaced by teams who are promoted from that lower tier either by finishing with the best records or by winning a playoff. In England, in the 2010–2011 season,

3393-511: Is the civilized expression about this. If you have egames where it's about killing somebody, this cannot be brought into line with our Olympic values." Due to that, the IOC suggested that they would approve more esports centered around games that simulate real sports, such as the NBA 2K or FIFA series. The issues around esports have not prevented the IOC from exploring what possibilities there are for incorporation into future Olympics. In July 2018,

3510-418: Is very rare. This is mostly because virtually all cities and towns in Europe have a football club of some sort, the size and strength of the club usually relative to the town's size and importance. Buying an existing top-flight club and moving it to a new location is problematic, as the supporters of the town's original club are unlikely to switch allegiance to an interloper. This means anyone wanting ownership of

3627-743: Is widely used in football around the world, notably in Africa and Latin America as well as Europe. The most notable variation has developed in Latin America where many countries have two league seasons per year , which scheduling allows because many Latin American nations lack a national cup competition. Another notable variation is the Brazilian system of two parallel league systems each with its own separate promotion and relegation, one national and another on state-level,

Pacific Championship Series - Misplaced Pages Continue

3744-629: The League of Legends Circuit Oceania would no longer directly qualify for the Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) and the World Championship (Worlds). Instead, the LCO's top two teams would have to compete in the PCS playoffs to gain a spot. Additionally, LCO players would have their residencies changed from "Oceania" to "PCS", meaning they would no longer take import slots on PCS teams, and vice versa. On 26 November 2023, Riot Games announced that

3861-462: The League of Legends Japan League would join the PCS playoffs in a similar manner to the LCO. From 2024 onwards, the top three teams from the LJL would have to compete in the PCS playoffs for a spot at MSI and Worlds. Additionally, LJL players would have their residencies changed from "Japan" to "PCS". Ten teams were initially selected by Riot Games as permanent franchise partners of the PCS. However, it

3978-887: The 2015 season . Another example of a franchised league in European sport is ice hockey 's Kontinental Hockey League , centered mainly in Russia with teams also located in Belarus , China , and Kazakhstan . Rugby union also has a European-based franchised league in the United Rugby Championship (historically the Celtic League, Pro12, and Pro14). It was founded with teams in the Celtic nations of Ireland , Scotland , and Wales , and later added teams outside those nations, first from Italy and then South Africa . The promotion-relegation system

4095-683: The 2020-2021 Vendee Globe was the first online game believe to have in excess of 1,000,000 unique users Ahead of The International 2021 , which was originally set to take place in Stockholm in 2020, the Swedish Sports Confederation voted in June 2021 to deny recognition of esports as a sporting event, which jeopardized plans for how Valve had arranged the event in regards to travel visas for international players. Valve had tried to work with Sweden to accommodate players, but eventually rescheduled

4212-533: The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris were in discussions with the IOC and the various professional esports organizations to consider esports for the event, citing the need to include these elements to keep the Olympics relevant to younger generations. Ultimately, the organization committee determined esports were premature to bring to the 2024 Games as medal events, but have not ruled out other activities related to esports during

4329-506: The Commonwealth Games Federation announced that esports would be included in the 2022 Commonwealth Games as a pilot event, with the possibility of it being a medal event in the 2026 Games . The inaugural Commonwealth Esports Championship had separate branding, medals, and organization and included both men and women's Dota 2 , eFootball , and Rocket League events. As a follow-up to 2021's Olympic Virtual Series,

4446-775: The EFL Cup , operated by the English Football League and open to its own teams and those in the Premier League). In conjunction with FIFA and other countries' governing bodies, it also sets the playing rules and the rules under which teams can sell players' contracts to other clubs. The rules or Laws of the Game are determined by the International Football Association Board . The Premier League negotiates television contracts for its games. However, although

4563-703: The Football Alliance , was then formed in 1889. When the two merged in 1892, it was not on equal terms; rather, most of the Alliance clubs were put in the new Football League Second Division , whose best teams would move up to the First Division in place of its worst teams. Another merger, with the top division of the Southern League in 1920, helped form the Third Division in similar fashion, firmly establishing

4680-520: The National Independent Soccer Association , is totally independent. None have a promotion/relegation system, although many teams have moved between levels, either by invitation or by choice. To prevent conflicts of interest , most North American sports leagues that operate on the franchise system do not allow individual owners to hold an interest in more than one franchise at once. Most such leagues also use revenue sharing and

4797-514: The National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs was established in 1876, its founders judged that in order to prosper, they must make baseball's highest level of competition a "closed shop", with a strict limit on the number of teams, and with each member having exclusive local rights. This guarantee of a place in the league year after year would permit each club owner to monopolize fan bases in their respective exclusive territories and give them

Pacific Championship Series - Misplaced Pages Continue

4914-680: The Nintendo PowerFest '94 . There were 132 finalists that played in the finals in San Diego , California. Mike Iarossi took home 1st prize. Blockbuster Video also ran their own World Game Championships in the early 1990s, co-hosted by GamePro magazine. Citizens from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Chile were eligible to compete. Games from the 1994 championships included NBA Jam and Virtua Racing . Television shows featuring esports during this period include

5031-606: The Professional Women's Hockey League and its de facto predecessor, the Premier Hockey Federation ) or are forced to operate in the pure single-entity model when investors fail to materialize (such as the Stars Football League ). Many North American systems have a secondary or minor league but without promotion and relegation of teams between them. Often a minor league team is partly or wholly owned by

5148-532: The Tokyo Olympic Games Committee for the 2020 Summer Olympics, four esports organizations have worked with Japan's leading consumer organization to exempt esports tournaments from gambling law restrictions. Takeo Kawamura , a member of the Japanese House of Representatives and of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party , led a coalition of ruling and opposing politicians to support esports, called

5265-617: The UEFA Champions League , operated by the Union of European Football Associations . A Premier League team might play a league game one week, and an FA Cup game against a team from a lower-level league the next, followed by an EFL Cup game against a team in the EFL, and then a fourth game might be against a team from across Europe in the Champions League. The promotion and relegation system

5382-519: The Vietnam Championship Series (VCS) was upgraded to a Tier 1 tournament and Vietnam became its own competitive region, separate from the rest of Southeast Asia. The GPL was rebranded as the League of Legends SEA Tour (LST) in mid-2018. Garena announced on 25 September 2019 that it intended to merge the LMS and LST into a single league, the details of which would be released near the end of

5499-662: The digital collectible card game (DCCG) genre since its release in 2014. While it is common for video games to be designed with the experience of the player in game being the only priority, many successful esports games have been designed to be played professionally from the beginning. Developers may decide to add dedicated esports features, or even make design compromises to support high level competition. Games such as StarCraft II , League of Legends , and Dota 2 have all been designed, at least in part, to support professional competition. Sports franchise The term league has many different meanings in different areas around

5616-654: The eGames , was held alongside the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro , though this was not supported by the IOC. During the Eighth Olympic Summit in December 2019, the IOC reiterated that it would only consider sports-simulating games for any official Olympic event, but it would look at two paths for such games in the future: those that promoted good physical and mental health lifestyles, and virtual reality and augmented reality games that included physical activity. In

5733-441: The "Electronic Circus", was used to feature these players in live challenges before audiences, and draw more people to video games. These video game players and tournaments were featured in well-circulated newspapers and popular magazines including Life and Time and became minor celebrities at the time, such as Billy Mitchell . Besides establishing the competitive nature of games, these types of promotional events all formed

5850-548: The 1990s led to the foundation of the international Evolution Championship Series (EVO) esports tournament in 1996. Large esports tournaments in the 1990s include the 1990 Nintendo World Championships , which toured across the United States, and held its finals at Universal Studios Hollywood in California. Nintendo held a 2nd World Championships in 1994 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System called

5967-465: The 2007 World Series of Video Games tournament that was held in Louisville, Kentucky . The G4 television channel originally covered video games exclusively, but broadened its scope to cover technology and men's lifestyle, though has now shutdown. During the 2010s, esports grew tremendously, incurring a large increase in both viewership and prize money. Although large tournaments were founded before

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6084-560: The 2015 World Championship hosted by the International Esports Federation , an esports panel of guests from international sports society discussed the future recognition of esports as a legitimate sport. Russia was the first country that classified "cybersport" as an official sport discipline on 25 July 2001. After a series of reforms in Russian sports, it was classified as a sport again on 12 March 2004. In July 2006, it

6201-486: The 2020 season would officially begin on 29 February. On 13 February it was announced that G-Rex had disbanded its League of Legends team and forfeited its spot in the PCS as a result of internal restructuring by their parent company Emperor Esports Stars. Five days later, Machi Esports was announced as G-Rex's replacement. Riot Games announced on 18 November 2022 that the PCS would expand to include Oceania, beginning in 2023. Two major changes were made: The winners of

6318-544: The 21st century, the number and scope of tournaments has increased significantly, going from about 10 tournaments in 2000 to about 260 in 2010. Many successful tournaments were founded during this period, including the World Cyber Games , the Intel Extreme Masters , and Major League Gaming . The proliferation of tournaments included experimentation with competitions outside traditional esports genres. For example,

6435-464: The Americas , which host regional and international events. The most common video game genres associated with esports are multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), first-person shooter (FPS), fighting games , card , battle royales , and real-time strategy (RTS) games. Popular esports franchises include League of Legends , Dota , Counter-Strike , Valorant , Overwatch , Street Fighter , Super Smash Bros. and StarCraft . Among

6552-578: The British shows GamesMaster and Bad Influence! ; the Australian game show A*mazing , where in the final round contestants competed in a video game face-off; and the Canadian game show Video & Arcade Top 10 . In the 1990s, many games benefited from increasing internet connectivity , especially PC games . Inspired by the fighting games Street Fighter II , Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting , id Software 's John Romero established competitive multiplayer in online games with Doom ' s deathmatch mode in 1993. Tournaments established in

6669-444: The French government started working on a project to regulate and recognize esports. The Games and Amusements Board of the Philippines started issuing athletic licenses to Filipino esports players who are vouched for by a professional esports team in July 2017. To help promote esports as a legitimate sport, several esports events have been run alongside more traditional international sports competitions. The 2007 Asian Indoor Games

6786-425: The Games. In September 2021, the Olympic Council of Asia announced eight esports games will officially debut as medal sports for the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou, China. In December 2021, the IOC confirmed its Olympic Virtual Series (OVS) will return in 2022. The first edition of the OVS which ran from 13 May to 23 June, featured nearly 250,000 participants and had more than two million entries. In January 2022,

6903-453: The IOC and the Global Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF) held a symposium and invited major figures in esports, including Epic Games ' Mark Rein , Blizzard Entertainment 's Mike Morhaime , and esports players Dario "TLO" Wünsch, Jacob "Jake" Lyon , and Se-yeon "Geguri" Kim , for these organizations "to gain a deeper understanding of esports, their impact and likely future development, so that [they] can jointly consider

7020-418: The IOC and the Singapore National Olympic Council held the inaugural Olympic Esports Week in Singapore in June 2023. Games featured at the event included: In June 2024, the IOC Executive Board announced the proposal to establish the Olympic Esports Games during the 142nd IOC Session held prior to the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, with the inaugural event to take place in 2025 at Saudi Arabia following

7137-441: The IOC announced the appointment of the organization's first ever head of virtual sport, tasked with the development of virtual sport for the global Olympic body, increasing the organization's engagement with gaming communities, and overseeing the Olympic Virtual Series, IOC's first licensed non-physical sports event. The inaugural series included virtual baseball, cycling, rowing, esailing and motorsports events. In February 2022,

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7254-465: The Japan esports Union, or JeSU. Kawamura said that they would be willing to pass laws to further exempt esports as needed so that esports athletes can make a living playing these sports. So far, this has resulted in the ability of esports players to obtain exemption licenses to allow them to play, a similar mechanism needed for professional athletes in other sports in Japan to play professionally. The first such licenses were given out in mid-July 2018, via

7371-436: The LJL and VCS, would become the LCP's secondary leagues, with a path to promotion to the LCP. The first professional esports league for League of Legends players in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Southeast Asia was the Garena Premier League (GPL), which ran from 2012 to mid-2018. Teams from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau were given their own league, the League of Legends Master Series (LMS), in late 2014. Three years later,

7488-434: The Ministry stating that they anticipate over 2 million such people in this profession in five years. In 2013, Canadian League of Legends player Danny "Shiphtur" Le became the first pro gamer to receive an American P-1A visa , a category designated for "Internationally Recognized Athletes". In 2014, Turkey's Ministry of Youth and Sports started issuing esports licenses to players certified as professionals. In 2016,

7605-447: The North American model of one premier league without promotion and relegation. A more rarely seen business model in North America is the pure single- entity league, typified by the two incarnations of the XFL , where there are no individual owners or investors, with all teams centrally owned and operated by the league. Many upstart leagues begin their existence as pure single-entity leagues before they secure investors for teams (such as

7722-400: The North American system due to American influence on the game. In cricket , the Indian Premier League , launched in 2008, also operates on this system. The Super League , which is the top level of rugby league in the United Kingdom and France (and included a Canadian team for several years), was run on a franchise basis from 2009 to 2014 , but returned to a promotion-relegation model with

7839-458: The Olympics fitting "with the rules and regulations of the Olympic movement". Another article by Andy Stout suggests that 106 million people viewed the 2017 Worlds Esports competition . International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach has noted that the IOC is troubled by violent games and the lack of a global sanctioning body for esports. Bach acknowledged that many Olympic sports originated from violent combat, but stated that "sport

7956-465: The Pacific islands as a whole (mainly Samoa and Tonga) but is based in New Zealand. Super Rugby also formerly featured franchises in South Africa, Japan, and Argentina. In east Asia, places such as Japan , China , South Korea and Taiwan have a particular differentiation among leagues: "European" sports such as football and rugby use promotion and relegation, while "American" sports such as baseball and basketball use franchising and minor leagues, with

8073-445: The September 2006 FUN Technologies Worldwide Webgames Championship featured 71 contestants competing in casual games for a $ 1 million grand prize. The popularity and emergence of online streaming services have helped the growth of esports in this period, and are the most common method of watching tournaments. Twitch , an online streaming platform launched in 2011, routinely streams popular esports competitions. In 2013, viewers of

8190-534: The U.S., team relocations have been controversial as supporters of the club will protest at its loss. Leagues around the world generally follow one or the other of these systems with some variation. Most sport leagues in Australia are similar to the North American model, using post-season playoffs and no relegation, but without geographical divisions, with the most notable examples being the Australian Football League ( Aussie rules ) and National Rugby League ( rugby league ). Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan uses

8307-480: The asset value of their shares in the club collapse. Some leagues offer a " parachute payment " to its relegated teams for the following years in order to protect them from bankruptcy. If a team is promoted back to the higher tier the following year then the parachute payment for the second season is distributed among the teams of the lower division. There is of course a corresponding bonanza for promoted clubs. The league does not choose which cities are to have teams in

8424-492: The competition only by a vote of current members; typically, a new place is put up for bid by would-be owners. The "franchise system" was introduced in baseball with the formation of the National League in 1876 and later adopted by the other North American leagues. Although member teams are corporate entities separate from their leagues, they operate only under league auspices. North American teams do not play competitive games against outside opponents. The leagues operate in

8541-465: The competition. In 2015, the first Esports Arena was launched in Santa Ana, California , as the United States' first dedicated esports facility. The global esports audience reached 662.6 million in 2020, and 921 million in 2022. In 2021, China announced a law which forbade minors from playing video games, which they described as "spiritual opium", for more than three hours a week. With China being

8658-505: The concept of direct, tournament-level competition between two players. Previously, video games most often relied on high scores to determine the best player, but this changed with Street Fighter II , where players would instead challenge each other directly, "face-to-face", to determine the best player, paving the way for the competitive multiplayer and deathmatch modes found in modern action games . The popularity of fighting games such as Street Fighter and Marvel vs. Capcom in

8775-409: The confidence to invest in infrastructure, such as improved ballparks. This in turn would guarantee the revenues needed to support traveling across the continent. In contrast, the shorter distances between urban areas in England allowed more clubs to develop large fan bases without incurring the same travel costs as in North America. When The Football League, now known as the English Football League ,

8892-544: The country. Physical viewership of esports competitions and the scope of events have increased in tandem with the growth of online viewership. In 2013, the Season 3 League of Legends World Championship was held in a sold-out Staples Center . The 2014 League of Legends World Championship in Seoul , South Korea, had over 40,000 fans in attendance and featured the band Imagine Dragons , and opening and closing ceremonies in addition to

9009-727: The country. Minister of Culture, Sports, and Tourism Park Jie-won coined the term "Esports" at the founding ceremony of the 21st Century Professional Game Association (currently Korean e-Sports Association ) in 2000. " Evo Moment 37 ", also known as the "Daigo Parry", refers to a portion of a Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike semi-final match held at Evolution Championship Series 2004 (Evo 2004) between Daigo Umehara (playing Ken Masters ) and Justin Wong (playing Chun-Li ). During this match, Umehara made an unexpected comeback by parrying 15 consecutive hits of Wong's "Super Art" move while having only one pixel of vitality . Umehara subsequently won

9126-889: The creation of the Halo Championship Series and a prize pool of US$ 50,000. Both Blizzard Entertainment and Riot Games have their own collegiate outreach programs with their North American Collegiate Championship. Since 2013 universities and colleges in the United States such as Robert Morris University Illinois and the University of Pikeville have recognized esports players as varsity level athletes and offer athletic scholarships . In 2017, Tespa , Blizzard Entertainment's collegiate esports division, unveiled its new initiative to provide scholarships and prizes for collegiate esports clubs competing in its tournaments worth US$ 1 million. Colleges have begun granting scholarships to students who qualify to play esports professionally for

9243-399: The development of esports worldwide. Competitions exist for many titles and genres, though the most popular games as of the early 2020s are Counter-Strike: Global Offensive , Call of Duty , League of Legends , Dota 2 , Fortnite , Rocket League , Valorant , Hearthstone , Super Smash Bros. Melee , StarCraft II and Overwatch . Hearthstone has also popularized

9360-448: The early 2010s, viewership was about 85% male and 15% female, with most viewers between the ages of 18 and 34. By the late 2010s, it was estimated that by 2020, the total audience of esports would grow to 454 million viewers, with revenue increasing to more than US$ 1 billion, with China accounting for 35% of the global esports revenue. The earliest known video game competition took place on 19 October 1972 at Stanford University for

9477-498: The esports scene, Nintendo hosted Wii Games Summer 2010. Spanning over a month, the tournament had over 400,000 participants, making it the largest and most expansive tournament in the company's history. In 2014 Nintendo hosted an invitational Super Smash Bros. for Wii U competitive tournament at the 2014 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) press conference that was streamed online on Twitch. Halo developers 343 Industries announced in 2014 plans to revive Halo as an esport with

9594-478: The event to Romania instead. The 2022 Commonwealth Games featured esports competitions as a pilot ahead of being a potential full medal event for 2026. In Greece , in March 2022 a law entered into force recognising and regulating esports and in June 2023, the relevant federation for esports has been officially given recognition and included in the list of sports federations. The Olympic Games are also seen as

9711-410: The game Spacewar . Stanford students were invited to an "Intergalactic spacewar olympics" whose grand prize was a year's subscription for Rolling Stone , with Bruce Baumgart winning the five-man-free-for-all tournament, and Slim Tovar and Robert E. Maas winning the team competition. Contemporary esports has roots in competitive face-to-face arcade video game competitions. A forerunner of esports

9828-689: The games. Each event in auto racing, baseball, cycling, rowing and sailing will be managed by an IOC-recognized governing body for the sport along with a video game publisher of a game for that sport. For example, the auto racing event will be based on the Gran Turismo series and overseen by the International Automobile Federation along with Polyphony Digital . The baseball, cycling, and esailing events will be based on eBaseball Powerful Pro Baseball 2020 , Zwift , and Virtual Regatta , respectively. The organization committee for

9945-524: The government encouraged esports, stating that by participating in esports, players were also "training the body for China". Furthermore, by early 2019, China recognized esports players as an official profession within the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security 's Occupation Skill Testing Authority recommendations, as well as professional gaming operators, those that distribute and manage esports games. By July 2019, more than 100,000 people had registered themselves as professional gamers under this, with

10062-656: The late 1990s include the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL), QuakeCon , and the Professional Gamers League . PC games played at the CPL included the Counter-Strike series, Quake series, StarCraft , and Warcraft . The growth of esports in South Korea is thought to have been influenced by the mass building of broadband Internet networks following the 1997 Asian financial crisis . It

10179-457: The late 2010s, leaders in Japan became involved in helping bring esports to the 2020 Summer Olympics and beyond, given the country's reputation as a major video game industry centre. Esports in Japan had not flourished due to the country's anti-gambling laws that also prevent paid professional gaming tournaments, but there were efforts starting in late 2017 to eliminate this issue. At the suggestion of

10296-515: The match. "Evo Moment #37" is frequently described as the most iconic and memorable moment in the history of competitive video gaming. Being at one point the most-watched competitive gaming moment of all time, it has been compared to sports moments such as Babe Ruth's called shot and the Miracle on Ice . In April 2006, the G7 teams federation were formed by seven prominent Counter-Strike teams. The goal of

10413-694: The most popular tournaments are the League of Legends World Championship , Dota 2 's International , the fighting game-specific Evolution Championship Series (EVO) and Intel Extreme Masters . Many other competitions use a series of league play with sponsored teams, such as the Overwatch League . Although the legitimacy of esports as a true sporting competition remains in question, they have been featured alongside traditional sports in some multinational events in Asia. The International Olympic Committee has discussed their inclusion in future Olympic events. In

10530-444: The national league would be the dominating competition in which a club might participate, there are many non-league fixtures a club might play in a given year. In European football there are national cup competitions, which are single elimination knock-out tournaments, are played every year and all the clubs in the league participate. Also, the best performing clubs from the previous year may participate in pan-European tournaments such as

10647-421: The nature of the marketing and promotion that formed the basis of modern esports. In 1984, Konami and Centuri jointly held an international Track & Field arcade game competition that drew more than a million players from across Japan and North America. Play Meter in 1984 called it "the coin-op event of the year" and an "event on a scale never before achieved in the industry". As of 2016 , it holds

10764-453: The organization was to increase stability in the esports world, particularly in standardizing player transfers and working with leagues and organizations. The founding members were 4Kings , Fnatic , Made in Brazil , Mousesports , NiP , SK-Gaming , and Team 3D . The organization only lasted until 2009 before dissolving. The 2000s was a popular time for televised esports. Television coverage

10881-539: The others as non-league or cup games, even though the separate competitions may be organized by the same governing body. Also, there is a rugby football code called rugby league , which is distinct from rugby union . Professional sports leagues in North America comprise a stipulated number of teams, known as franchises, which field one team each. The franchises have territorial rights, usually exclusive territories large enough to cover major metropolitan areas, so that they have no local rivals. New teams may enter

10998-467: The platform watched 12 billion minutes of video on the service, with the two most popular Twitch broadcasters being League of Legends and Dota 2 . During one day of The International, Twitch recorded 4.5 million unique views, with each viewer watching for an average of two hours. The modern esports boom has also seen a rise in video games companies embracing the esports potential of their products. After many years of ignoring and at times suppressing

11115-610: The plot of various films, including 1982's Tron . In the UK, the BBC game show First Class included competitive video game rounds featuring the contemporary arcade games, such as Hyper Sports , 720° and Paperboy . In the United States, the Amusement Players Association held its first U.S. National Video Game Team competition in January 1987, where Vs. Super Mario Bros.

11232-664: The pyramid structure normally found in football, but instead follows the tradition of Australian sports having a franchise model and a post-season playoff system. This model better suits a country with a few important central locations where a sport needs to ensure there is a team playing with no risk of relegation. Likewise, the American franchise model is used by rugby union's Super Rugby , which features 12 non-European franchises. Australia and New Zealand have five franchises each; one franchise represents Fiji but currently plays most of its "home" games in Australia; and one franchise represents

11349-481: The record for the largest organized video game competition of all time, according to Guinness World Records . Televised esports events aired during this period included the American show Starcade which ran from 1982 to 1984 airing a total of 133 episodes, on which contestants would attempt to beat each other's high scores on an arcade game. A video game tournament was included as part of TV show That's Incredible! , and tournaments were also featured as part of

11466-445: The same opponents, and some teams may not meet during a regular season at all. This results in teams with identical records that have faced different opponents differing numbers of times, making team records alone an imperfect measure of league supremacy. Major League Rugby , which began play in 2018 as the second attempt to launch a professional rugby union competition in the U.S., has a business structure identical to that of MLS. It

11583-465: The same teams play both leagues each year. The European model is also used in Europe even when the sports were founded in America, showing that the league system adopted is not determined by the sport itself, but more on the tradition of sports organization in that region. Sports such as basketball in Spain and Lithuania use promotion and relegation . In the same vein, Australia's A-League Men does not use

11700-419: The school. Colleges such as Columbia College , Robert Morris University , and Indiana Institute of Technology have taken part in this. In 2018, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology began a tuition scholarship program for esports players. In 2014, the largest independent esports league, Electronic Sports League , partnered with the local brand Japan Competitive Gaming to try and grow esports in

11817-459: The semifinals, and defeated Blackpool 2–1 at the final in Wembley Stadium. The system originated in England in 1888 when twelve clubs decided to create a professional Football League . It then expanded by merging with the Football Alliance in 1892, with the majority of the Alliance teams occupying the lower Second Division , due to the divergent strengths of the teams. As this differential

11934-527: The teams Birmingham City , Blackpool and West Ham United were relegated from the Premier League to the Football League Championship , the second level of English football. They were replaced by the top two teams from the second level, Queens Park Rangers and Norwich City , both of which won automatic promotion, as well as Swansea City (a Welsh club that plays in the English system), which won

12051-499: The top division. For example, Leeds , the fourth-biggest city in England, saw their team, Leeds United , relegated from the Premier League to the Championship in 2004, and went without top-flight football for 16 seasons before United returned to the Premier League in 2020. During this period, United were relegated again to the third-tier League One in 2007 and returned to the Championship in 2010. Any city that loses all of its Premier League clubs to relegation will continue to be without

12168-500: The tournament "proved to be the biggest event ever" in the arcade game industry, and was attended by members from leading Japanese newspapers and leisure industry companies. Sega stressed "the importance of such tournaments to foster better business relationships between the maker-location-customer and create an atmosphere of competition on TV amusement games". In 1977, Gremlin Industries (a year before being acquired by Sega) held

12285-551: The ways in which [they] may collaborate to the mutual benefit of all of sport in the years ahead". The IOC has tested the potential for esports through exhibition games. With support from the IOC, Intel sponsored exhibition esports events for StarCraft II and Steep prior to the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang , and five South Korean esports players were part of the Olympic Torch relay. A similar exhibition showcase,

12402-480: The world, and its use for different concepts can make comparisons confusing. Usually a league is a group of teams that play each other during the season. It is also often used for the name of the governing body that oversees the league, as in America's Major League Baseball or England's Football League. Because most European football clubs participate in different competitions during a season, regular-season home-and-away games are often referred to as league games and

12519-522: The year. On 19 December, Riot Games announced the name of the new league, the Pacific Championship Series (PCS), and a list of nine of the ten teams that would compete in it. Berjaya Dragons was announced as the last team joining the PCS on 17 January 2020. The 2020 season was postponed until further notice on 29 January due to the COVID-19 outbreak . It was later announced on 18 February that

12636-553: Was announced on 4 August 2020 that a promotion tournament would be introduced for the 2021 season to promote regional competitiveness.   denotes a team that no longer competes in the PCS. Esports Esports ( / ˈ iː s p ɔːr t s / ), short for electronic sports , is a form of competition using video games . Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, played individually or as teams. Multiplayer competitions were long

12753-480: Was best established in South Korea, with StarCraft and Warcraft III competitions regularly televised by dedicated 24-hour cable TV game channels Ongamenet and MBCGame . Elsewhere, esports television coverage was sporadic. The German GIGA Television covered esports until its shutdown in 2009. The United Kingdom satellite television channel XLEAGUE.TV broadcast esports competitions from 2007 to 2009. The online esports only channel ESL TV briefly attempted

12870-431: Was founded in 1888, it was not intended to be a rival of The Football Association but rather the top competition within it. The new league was not universally accepted as England's top-calibre competition right away. To help win fans of clubs outside The Football League, a system was established in which the worst teams at the end of each season would need to win re-election against any clubs wishing to join. A rival league,

12987-620: Was held by Sega in 1974, the All Japan TV Game Championships, a nationwide arcade video game tournament in Japan. The tournament was intended by Sega to promote the play and sales of video games in the country. There were local tournaments held in 300 locations across Japan, and then sixteen finalists from across the country competed in the final elimination rounds at Tokyo 's Hotel Pacific. Prizes awarded included television sets ( color and black-and-white ), cassette tape recorders and transistor radios . According to Sega,

13104-462: Was heralded by Taito 's Space Invaders in 1978, which popularized the use of a persistent high score for all players. Several video games in the next several years followed suit, adding other means of tracking high scores such with high score tables that included the players' initials in games like Asteroids in 1979. High score-chasing became a popular activity and a means of competition. The Space Invaders Championship held by Atari in 1980

13221-501: Was overcome over the next five years, the winners of the Second Division went into a playoff with the worst placed team in the First Division , and if they won, were promoted into the top tier. The first club to achieve promotion was Sheffield United , which replaced the relegated Accrington F.C. Relegation often has devastating financial consequences for club owners who not only lose TV, sponsorship and gate income but may also see

13338-498: Was popular among competitive arcade players. The 1988 game Netrek was an Internet game for up to 16 players, written almost entirely in cross-platform open-source software . Netrek was the third Internet game , the first Internet game to use metaservers to locate open game servers, and the first to have persistent user information . In 1993 it was credited by Wired Magazine as "the first online sports game". The fighting game Street Fighter II (1991) popularized

13455-434: Was removed from a list of sport disciplines because it did not fit the new sport standards. On 7 July 2016, The Ministry of Sport decided to add cybersport into the sport registry and on 13 April 2017, esports become an official sport discipline once again. China was another one of the first countries to recognize esports as a real sport in 2003, despite concerns at the time that video games were addictive. Through this,

13572-507: Was the earliest large scale video game competition, attracting more than 10,000 participants across the United States, establishing competitive gaming as a mainstream hobby. It was won by Rebecca Heineman . Walter Day , owner of an arcade in Iowa, had taken it upon himself to travel across the United States to record the high scores on various games in 1980, and on his return, founded Twin Galaxies ,

13689-668: Was the first notable multi-sport competition including esports as an official medal-winning event, alongside other traditional sports, and the later editions of the Asian Indoor Games , as well as its successor the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games , have always included esports as an official medal event or an exhibition event up to now. Moreover, the Asian Games , which is the Asian top-level multi-sport competition, also included esports as

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