Our lives have never been more convenient with the widely propagation of technology, especially computers. We wake up in the morning, look at our phones, acquire knowledge about weather, check our emails, and so on. Computer-based technology is omnipresent, and it has empowered us to be extremely efficient and all-knowing-at-will. Yet, the society is leaving less and less time for people to be involved in some of the physical activities that takes up some time. For example, when there were no personal computers at every household, most children would go outside, meet their friends and have fun, maybe play sports together. In late 2010s, most children do not see a good reason to go outside and play basketball with their friends, for they have a variety of alternatives via internet in their homes. People can participate in almost any kind of experience online, access to video clips, listen to music that they want to watch or listen. When bored and not sure what exactly you want to do, you can find thousands of people who are streaming something around the world at any time or in any place.

As far as we know, non-internet inventions of mankind, namely televisions and books, are not going to be completely replaced by internet-based inventions, such as streaming services like Netflix and e-books. However, internet-based inventions are certainly growing very rapidly and efficiently. Many people and companies have been recognizing this fact and starting to acknowledge that mankind is now in internet-based phase and not to go back. For a recognizable amount of time people used to spend on playing sports is replaced by times to play internet-based competitions, a brand-new term “e-sports” was coined and started to spread into people’s lives.

The word has not been used commonly until 2010s, but early forms of esports—video game competitions—were not widely appreciated by people. Even nowadays, there is an argument whether we should take esports as real “sports.” To some people, esports is considered nothing more than immature video game contest. However, to others, it is indeed considered as a form of sports, which can be enjoyed by multiple people, and create a significant amount of profits by carrying it out. Apparently, as personal computers and mobile devices are widespread to more population of the world, esports has accessibility to all those people. As people are exposed more to gaming industry and making more contact to it, people’s interest toward esports grew.

Esports’ promising future

• Smith, Noah.
  • Traditional sports’ profits are “based heavily on television broadcast revenue and box office receipts,” whereas esports’ fuel depend heavily on sponsors, profits from content creation and apparel. Authorities in the field of esports say that because esports is very new-born thing with a short history, many steps they are taking are now setting precedents for future. They also vow that they will be launching well-organized programs with decent curriculum as traditional sports do.
• Taylor 2015
  • Esports still struggles with breaking out of whole “geek” reputation and “bad-influence-for-kid” reputations. Taylor rightly points out that esports “are often not seen as providing readily apparent connections to lifestyle brands” (Taylor 2015, 157), explaining why despite all the remarkable growth esports have not been successful attracting sponsors who are not technology-related.
• Taylor 2018
  • There are several business models that esports has: partnerships, media licensing, white label products (BlizzCon, for example), sponsorship, in-game contents, advertisements, pay per view, event revenue, and crowdfunding. Unlike traditional sports, esports uses games developed by companies who want credit for their intellectual properties. Thus, there have been problems between league hosts versus game developers—they must come to an agreement for esports to truly bloom.