Esports, also known as electronic sports, have been around since the late 1900s. However, it wasn’t until the 1990s that esports began to gain popularity. As video games became more advanced and online gaming became more widespread, the esports industry started to take shape. Over the past few decades, esports has grown into a global phenomenon, with millions of fans and players worldwide. In this article, we will take a comprehensive look at the evolution of esports.

The Early Days of Esports

The first recorded video game tournament took place in 1972 at Stanford University. The game was Spacewar!, and the tournament was called the Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics. The prize for the winner was a year’s subscription to Rolling Stone magazine. While this event was not an esports event in the way that we understand it today, it was a precursor to the esports events that would follow.

In the 1980s, video game arcades were popular around the world, and video game tournaments began to take place in these arcades. These tournaments were mostly casual affairs, and the prizes were usually small. However, they laid the groundwork for the professional esports industry that would emerge in the coming decades.

The Rise of Online Gaming

In the 1990s, online gaming began to take off, and the first esports leagues and tournaments started to appear. One of the first esports games was Quake, a first-person shooter game released in 1996. The first Quake tournament, the Red…