eSports
 

Once a brief topic in the 2016 Video Games Thread, looks like it now deserves its own thread.

UCI to launch first-of-its-kind official e-sports initiative in the fall

My alma mater, btw. ;)

Its neat, I guess, but I can't say I really understand where they want this to go.


What, after their careers are over and the ones that can't get into a career within the pro scene itself (or the ones that don't want to), decide to go to college at age 23-26?

There is a collegiate League of Legends series, but its the third tier of competition, at best, in the North American region.

For club level stuff its pretty neat though.

In my opinion, the only e-sport that has any appeal to a wider audience than hardcore gamers right now is Rocket League. That is not to say that there aren't enough hardcore gamers out there, but I feel like a game like Rocket League could draw an audience much broader than League of Legends or a FPS.

FPS has the potential to have a better appeal than MOBAs because they are simpler to grasp at the start. League and DOTA just have too many champions and types of strategies. I don't know anything about competitive Rocket League.

League of Legends sells out 50k soccer stadiums in 15 minutes, for now. How long will that last, who knows. 36 million people watched last year's Worlds. 14 million concurrent viewers at its peak for the finals. I don't think League has to deal with problems in its appeal. There are large rumors that have been going around for about a year that the NA and EU league of legends regions are going to franchise lock for the 2017 season. No more relegations. That's why you have Multi millionairs and venture capital money coming into league of legends this year. Rick Fox owns a team. Shaq and A-Rod are minority investors in a team along with some other NBA ownership folks. A non-pro team released salary figures this year, all of their players were making 55-70k/yr, plus a full support staff. The belief is that once teams can't be relegated out of the pro league, it is very possible that companies like Coca Cola start wanting their names on league team jerseys. There is a LOT of money being thrown into this right now compared to a year ago.

Rovell: LCS rulings create opportunity, hesitation for traditional sports organizations



This is all followup to Riot essentially kicking out 2 NA LCS teams, forcing their owners to sell in very short order. One of them, Team Impulse, seems pretty straightforward and not many people had issues with it. The players apparently didn't have contracts and weren't being paid reliably. The other, Renegades, is shrouded in controversy. There is likely some fire there, but there are tons of problems with all of this.


At the same time this is happening in NA there have been some stories posted recently talking about FC Schalke 04, a Bundesliga side in German soccer, potentially buying a EU League of Legends team.

Sources: Soccer org Schalke 04 finalizes League Championship Series roster, picks up Fox

Sounds like this is a done deal now.

We went on a capus visit this Summer to a small college. They had a small building next to campus designed for esports. That was its sole purpose.

I found it interesting.

There's even schools with scholarship programs for eSports now.

Wowsa.......

League of Legends Lands Seven-Year, $300 Million Streaming Deal

Excellent. That had been rumored for awhile, I'm thrilled to see it come through.

"Utah is the first Power 5 school to offer a varsity esports program"

https://www.sbnation.com/2017/4/19/1...llege-lol-team