The earliest known video game competition took place on 19 October 1972 at Stanford University for the game Spacewar. Stanford students were invited to an “Intergalactic spacewar Olympics” whose grand prize was a year’s subscription for Rolling Stone, with Bruce Baumgart winning the five-man-free-for-all tournament and Tovar and Robert E. Maas winning the Team Competition.
Since then eSports went from small basements sized tournaments to a predicted 2018 revenue of $905 million. In 2019, the esports industry is expected to cross the billion-dollar threshold with revenues projected to hit $1.1 billion. By 2021, revenues could reach $1.65 billion.
What was once thought of as a fad soon reached popularity throughout the world. People have come together to form their own leagues in the hopes of building a community, crushing opponents and winning grand prizes. While hundreds of leagues have formed, Super League Gaming’s (SLG) wants to set itself separate from the rest.
Their mission is to give gamers an entirely new way to enjoy the games they love. The Santa Monica-based company cut its teeth producing Minecraft events nationwide, an event series that continues to grow. Never content thinking small, SLG goes big. Its competitions take place in state-of-the-art movie theaters. All the action is played out on big screens and bolstered with thundering sound systems.
The Koalition spoke with Matt Edelman, Chief Commercial Officer of SLG, about New York’s aspiring esports athletes who battled it during their Battle of the Boroughs tournament at Tribeca Games, SLG’s momentus 2018 (4 team league expansion, new partnerships with Redbull and Logitech) as well as SLG’s perspectives on the 2018 esports landscape.
Check out the interview below.
