This past Memorial Day Weekend, while many headed to the beach or the lake, a select group of elite gamers headed to Los Angeles for the League of Legends College Championship. After six weeks of tournament LoL gameplay, Maryville University ousted the University Of Toronto for the championship in an exciting 3-1 match streamed by thousands online.
There’s big money in eSports — especially with Riot Games’ League Of Legends and it’s only getting bigger. In 2016, the winner LoL team — South Korea’s SK Telecom T1 — walked away from the tournament with a $2,680,000 purse split between its seven members. Second place also received a nice payday: A cool $1,005,000, also split seven ways.
With big prize money and huge, digital viewership online, the boom of eSports is getting all sorts of attention from investors looking for the next big thing. After attending the biz-eSports Summit in Los Angeles — a conference about the monetization of the eSports industry — one investment firm, Pacific Crest Securities, walked away with an estimate on just how big competitive online gaming is going to be. In 2017 alone, it estimates the entire industry to be worth $600 million. It could be even bigger when Blizzard Entertainment — maker of Warcraft, Diablo, and StarCraft — launches Overwatch League later this year:
