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1st video game tournament held
In November of 1980, Atari held the first ever large-scale video game tournament: The National Space Invaders Championship. It was created to help promote their console release of the popular game, Space Invaders on the Atari 2600. -
Cyberathlete Professional League was created
CPL looked to organize more competitive tournaments as well as offer players bigger prize pools which would reward them for being good at the games and give an incentive for people to get into competitive gaming. -
StarCraft released
Starcraft was a sci-fi real time strategy game created by Blizzard. It singlehandedly sparked the huge surge of eSports popularity in South Korea and as the professional scene developed, it really set the tone for how eSports tournaments should be treated and handled all around the world. -
World Cyber Games
A new South Korean eSports organization was created in late 2000, by the name of the World Cyber Games. The goal of the organization was to create an annual international tournament similar in a sense to the Olympics except with eSports instead of actual sports. This was one of the first international competitions. -
Major League Gaming was created
MLG is one of the biggest eSports organizations today, with tournaments for dozens of different titles and genres. -
League of Legends released in major countries
League of Legends by Riot Games, a smash hit in the world of eSports, was released on October 27, 2009. The rise of League of Legends helped popularized eSports in the western world, LoL's popularity in South Korea boosted its player count and will soon boost eSports itself. -
StarCraft II released internationally
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. StarCraft II sparked the start of competitive play, its rise on South Korea inspired the western world's start on competitive gaming. -
The International 2011
The Dota Major Championships are four annual tournaments sponsored by Valve. It consists of fall, winter, spring events, while The International takes the place of the summer event. The first one took place in Cologne, Germany with a total of $1.6 million prize pool. -
LoL Season 1 World Championships
The first every League of Legends World Championship brought together the top 3 teams from every region, competing for a $99,500 prize pool and the first Riot trophy. -
CS:GO released globally
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed by Hidden Path Entertainment and Valve Corporation. Also known as CS:GO, its release skyrocketed the eSports industry due to the amount of increase of interest and online players. New eSports organizations were found, the rise of eSports has started. -
The International 2012
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LoL Season 2 World Championship
Months after the League of Legends season 2 World championship was hosted at Los Angeles, California, Season 2 for the competitive play of LoL started, it had the biggest prize pool for any eSports tournament at the time, totalling to around 2 Million dollars. The grand prize was 1 Million dollars. Over 8.2 million viewers watched the online stream of the tournament, making it the most watched eSports event during the time. -
US recognizes LoL players as athletes
As a result of many discussions with the creators of the game, Riot Games and the US government, League of Legends has been recognized as a professional sport. Foreign players may now gain visas to live the country and work there under the title of a professional athlete. -
Dota 2 officialy released globally
Even though Dota 2 was around 3 years before it got released, the initial release for other people to play not just for competitive reasons sparked the game's popularity. Dota 2 is a free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Valve Corporation. LoL's rival, Dota 2 is one of the most significant games that helped popularize eSports as a whole new category for a sport due to its competitive plays and large prize pools. -
League of Legends becomes an Olympic sport
Because of the United State's decision to recognize League of Legends players as professional athletes, The International Olympic Commitee also decided to accept it as an olympic sport. Expected to be played during the 2016 Olympics, as a let down, it was not. -
The International 2013
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LoL Season 3 World Championship
With a prize pool of $2.05 million, this tournament broke the previous year's record of 8.2 million total online viewers with 1.1 million watching at once. During the Season 3 world championship, 32 million people watched it being streamed online, with 8.5 million watching simultaneously. -
The International 2014
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LoL Season 4 World Championship
With a total prize pool of $2.13 and a total views of 288 million. The Season 4 Worlds was the first major LoL tournament that was hosted outside of the US, hosted in Seoul, South Korea, was the start of growing sponsorships with Imagine Dragon performing for the Finals. League Of Legends is now one of the mainstream eSport games. -
The International 2015
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LoL Season 5 World Championship
The 2015 World Championship had the largest amount of unique champion picks of any League of Legends World Championship, at 74. With, coincidentally, 73 games played in total, that's an oddly tidy average of just over one unique champion per game. Hosted in Europe with a prize pool of $2.13 million, LoL season 5 racked up a total of 334 million views -
The International 2016
The International 2016 was the sixth iteration of Dota 2's flagship annual championship. Hosted by Valve Corporation, it took place at the KeyArena Center in Seattle, Washington. It was the very first eSports tournament to have featured more than $20.7 million for its prize pool -
LoL Season 6 World Championship
Season 6 held the largest prize pool with a prize pool of $5.07 million. It came back to its roots, being host here back in the US, it racked up a total of 14.7 concurrent views in the first day and a total of 370 hours viewed through out the whole event. Season 6 brought up rivals from different sides of the world for a rematch and the dominance of the Asian team soon showed that the Western play was not even close to beating their overall knowledge of the game.
