Electronic Sports (esports) is considered a global spectator sport with more than 500 million esports fans in 152 countries that watch these competitions online through various streaming platforms like Twitch.tv, YouTube Gaming and Facebook Gaming.
The League of Legends World Championship brought in more than 100m viewers, including a peak of 44m concurrent viewers, during the competition's final round on November 10, 2019.
Besides the serge in the number of spectators, the prize pools are setting world records, The International - 9 (TI9) had a prize pool of around $ 31m and overall more than $ 226m was given as prize money in 2019. This means that professional players are making millions of dollars in prizes and salaries from their teams.
The Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) has included esports in the Asian Indoor Games since 2007, where it was included as a demonstration discipline. Since the 4th Asian Indoor & Martial Arts Games, (Incheon Korea, 2013), esports has been included as an official discipline. Esports was a demonstration sport in the Asian Games-2018, Jakarta (Indonesia). Esports will be a medal sport in the Asian Games 2022, Hangzhou (China).
In year 2013, the US Government officially recognized esports as an official sport and granted visas for professional esports players. In June 2014, University of Illinois, USA, announced Athletic Scholarships to esports players, and now we have 3 more universities who have started giving esports scholarships.
Media houses like ESPN, BBC, Turner, FOX are already active in this domain; Turner & IMG have tied up to launch televised esports League "e-League“.
