Although new when compared to traditional athletic sports, eSports have erupted into a worldwide phenomenon. Perhaps the first organized video game tournament, the First National Space Invaders Competition took place in 1980, hosted by Atari. It was “the first of its kind to attract more than 10,000 participants, helping the competitive gaming movement gain a foothold in the mainstream.” (Langshaw 2012) On the other hand, the first Olympic games took place in 776 BC. (Christesen 2012) Although they are somewhat similar, eSports and traditional athletic sports differ in a large variety of ways.
At first glance, it might be assumed that someone who plays video games competitively would be able to do so for longer than a football or soccer player;
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Although competitive gamers still sign contracts and get paid salaries, a large portion of their earnings come from winning tournaments. In December of 2015, Ember, a North American League of Legends team, publicly displayed their players’ salaries, making them the first to do so. The highest paid player was “Greyson “Goldenglue” Glimer who will earn $65,000 in salary with a further $27,000 in performance and signing bonuses.” (Duran 2016) Compared to Tom Brady’s current two year $41,000,000 contract, this seems like nothing. (Frank 2017) Prize money is often handled differently than traditional sports as well. Every summer the developer of Dota 2, Valve, hosts a large tournament called The International. At The International, the teams earn money based on where they place at the end of the tournament. You do not win any money per game. In 2016, the total prize pool was $20,770,460, with $9,1393,002 going to the first-place team. Even the team that took eighth place walked away with over $500,000. In the 2016 NFL post-season, each player on each team walked away with money at the end of each game, the amount of which depended on what stage of the post-season they were in, and whether they won. Each player on the winning team in the Super Bowl took home $107,000, while the losing players took home $53,000 per player. (Bowers 2017). This is in addition to …show more content…
The annual League of Legends Championship, in 2014, sold out the World Cup Stadium in Seoul, South Korea, which can seat 40,000 people. It also drew an online audience of 27,000,000 viewers. (Casselman 2015) While the Super Bowl far outpaced the League of Legends Championship with approximately 112,000,000 viewers, the Championship performed better than some other large sporting events. (Casselman 2015) The final round of the Masters golf tournament drew in 25,000,000 viewers, while the NBA finals only drew in approximately 15,000,000 viewers. (Casselman 2015) The method of viewership for eSports is generally an online steaming service, such as Twitch or YouTube. These are generally free sources. Some games, such as Dota 2, have services built into them that allow you to watch eSports within the game client. This is somewhat different in that, when watching on Twitch or YouTube, the view is restricted to what the broadcaster is watching. When viewing in the game client, control of the camera can be left in the hands of the user or left up to the broadcaster. Multiple different game statistics are also available at the click of a button. In addition, most major tournament broadcasters record the games and upload the full replay to services like YouTube. So even if a game is missed, it can be viewed later without concern of setting up a DVR or some such service. Most
“Fans pay to watch athletes compete at the highest level. To be sure, it is the fans that primarily pay the athletes’ salaries” (Walter). Yes, a large portion of an athlete’s pay comes from the people that come to watch them. Athletes get a portion of all revenue their team or staff receives. This means that everybody gets a cut of that prize money, everybody gets a cut of ...
The highest salary of an NFL player is Drew Brees and he gets paid $23,800,000 annually (Gerencer). Not everyone in the NFL gets paid that much though; the average NFL players earns about $2,150,000 (Gerencer). The football players get paid by the owner of the team and endorsements. The owner then gets paid by the people who attend, the companies that sponsor, merchandise sold and the cities that they are in. On the contrary the US Military gets paid by the taxpayers, meaning the higher your members get paid the more you have to pay, or the less money the government can use to spend on other items (Thompson).
The birth of Esports can contribute most of its discovery to its original roots from the 19th century era (Bellis). To understand the next generation of athlete culture, Esports, it is necessary for individuals to understand the beginnings of the newly bred activity. During the 19th century era video games were often overlooked due to its funky nature, however, the introduction of new technology that allowed individuals to manipulate and control objects was appealing to some (Bellis). One of the very first video games to have been developed was a simple graphical computer application used to resemble virtual Tic-Tac-Toe (Bellis). Although the game was simple in nature and basic in control, ...
The controversy of athletes being overpaid dates back to 1922, when well-known baseball player George “Babe” Ruth received $50,000 within the first year of his career. Ruth’s extensive wealth was bolstered by dozens of endorsements (Saperecom). As it is shown in figure 1, in the Fortunate 50 Tiger Woods takes the number one spot for highest paid athlete. Tiger’s salary for 2011 is $2,294,116 and like Babe Ruth, his endorsements exceed his salary earning $60,000,000 making his total $62,294,116 (Freedman). It’s crazy to think that 89 years ago professional athletes scarcely made more than the average person today. This is of course not counting the inflation that has occurred since the years which Babe Ruth played baseball.
A change was made by the board of directors stating that cowboys competing in the rodeo should be given their fair share of prize money every competition. This proposed law was passed, but contestants were required to pay an entry fee before the rodeo ever since. Eventually extra money was added to the pot at bigger events. Now as much as $1,000,000,000 can up for grabs at a single competition. The amount of money you can win is important because it determines your rank in the world. Whoever has won the most money at the end of a year wins the title for that event
College athletes work hard for their colleges earning millions of dollars for their schools. The players likeness is being used like their jerseys, merchandise, and ticket sales. None of that revenue goes to players to the players only to schools and the NCAA. The Complete Revenue for the NCAA in 2016 was 995.9 million
Therefore, all of the players are employees of the owners and the league. The league and owners are the ones who do all of the advertising, make deals with television stations, sign contracts for licensing, and make it all happen. They are the ones who should be reaping the most financial rewards. In his magazine article, "Held Ball", Phil Taylor, a writer for Sports Illustrated, let us know that with the signing of a new four year, $2.6 billion contract with NBC and Turner Sports, the league seems to have plenty of money. But with figures of about a billion dollars being paid out in player salaries, there is not enough money to pay for all the employees, the arenas, advertising, stadiums, team travel and accommodations, team doctors, trainers, and other things associated with owning a business without once again raising ticket prices for the fans....
Being able to watch everything from live streams to the Top 10 plays of the week in 1080p High Definition is not something to easily over look. Along with high quality video,
Comparing Television and Website News Television news is one of the best ways for people to know what is going on in the world today. With the momentum the World Wide Web has gained with in the last 6 years many television news stations have also added a website to their media coverage. ESPN is no different; the station still has Sports Center where all the viewers can keep up with their favorite sport, but ESPN also has the website www.msn.espn.go.com where the viewer can get the same or even more information than in the television broadcast. Which is better for you? Why would a person choose one form of media over the other?
On the side that is for eSports to be considered among the tier of sports that is broadcast on televisions throughout the world. Nick Allen, Riot Games manager ...
Sport has always entertained and influenced our lives. It creates dreams for children and goals for adults. However, many fans are oblivious to the millions they pocket each year. It is without doubt that our sports stars are grossly overpaid. Their annual earnings exceed those we make in a lifetime, even when compared to highly qualified professionals.
When addressing the value of entertainment, there is without a doubt, that we as a society value entertainment highly. But there is no reason that these athletes, who are here to merely entertain us, get paid higher wages than those that save our lives and teach us such as medical doctors and teachers. I find it ridiculous that players make millions of dollars a year, and yet demand more. The entertainment that these athletes provide is solely entertainment; it is not essential to the function or productivity of society. If I were to become a professional football player I would not complain about my salary for many reasons. I am playing the sport that I love and getting paid for it. The minimum wage for football is well over $100,000 a year, as is for many professional sports. These reasons by their lonesome are enough to warrant that the salary professional athletes are paid is suffice.
Esports requires enormous amounts skill and strategy. The serious eSports athletes train for months on end, displaying strong mental fortitude, insane reaction time, and utmost dedication as they compete. Esports teams spend a huge amount of time working on strategy. Esports players may sit in front of a computer screen for 14 hours a day and you may think they are unhealthy, well on the contrary, most of them work out too stay healthy because a healthy body leads to a healthy mind which is the most important tool in esports. Esports athletes have incredible reaction times and esports players can make more than 300 actions per minute, which takes multitasking to a whole new level. Their technique must be impeccable otherwise they will get crushed the strategy based game known as LOL. All the game is strategy and macro play. Every esports event held for LOL has around 10 teams competing twice a week. That is 20 games a week where one team plays another team. They sure as hell do have opponents. They have everything that falls under the category of every other sport. So why isn’t it recognized? People will argue against these points by stating that gamers don’t need to train as long as normal athletes do, and require much more practice to keep competing at a top level. They will also refute that it doesn’t nearly take as much skill as gamers or that it’s easy to be easy at video games. They may
According to The Fédération Internationale de Football Association A.K.A FIFA, the World Cup in 2010 hosted in South Africa had in-home television coverage of the competition reached above 3.2 billion! That is 46.4 percent of the global population; This was an eight percent increase on the number of viewers recorded during the 2006 FIFA World Cup hosted in Germany (FIFA). The only sports events that can compete are the super bowl, which on average has about 100 million viewers, or the Olympics with a total of 4.2 billion views this does surpass the number of viewers in the world cup, however, this is counting all of the 42 events all at once. In comparison the world cup, which is host only one sport, which is soccer/football, gets 3.2 billion compared to the Olympics which has 42 times the number of events that the world cup has, INCLDUING SOCCER. Press, Associated. "FIFA: At Least 1 Billion Saw Cup final." ESPN. ESPN Internet Ventures, 11 July 2011. Web. 05 May 2014