People that play esports competitively make millions each year in this industry alone.  From 52 tournaments Lee Jaedong made 519,086.72 dollars not including sponsors. People fly overseas to watch these players in action as they play for hundreds of thousands of dollars each month.

Video games and esports have been played for many years but it's never been taken this seriously.Alot of people even make it into a full time job. “Cant complain too much, playing video games for living.” Says nadeshot a full time Call of Duty Pro. The highest paid major or largest tournament for the year is for the game Dota 2 21,350,130.28 dollars. Fans really feel like they can connect to their favorite pros, through social media, like twitch and twitter. Thousands fly to come see them compete live in person, while millions watch live from home. 
Alot of people tune and see the pros play everyday apart from tournaments. Thousands fly to places around the world to watch as millions online from live feed. With millions on the line, the suspense builds in the arena and at home when viewers watch online. Usually one player does not attract a lot of attention, but Matt Hagg with over 1.5 million youtube subscribers, can pull numbers and viewers for his team. There are also tons of outlets for the fans of these players to connect to their favorite player. This can be done through social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Youtube, they can also be watched live from Twitch.tv and Mlg.tv.

The pros make a majority of their money from competing in tournaments, so when a pro in on the verge of losing their favorite job due to a loss in a tournament it gets intense. The pro gaming life gives people opportunities that some people wouldn't believe, at twenty years old Matt Hagg, won 100 thousand dollars at the 2013 Call of Duty World Championships. Many teams also make there money from sponsors, Matt’s team, Optic Gaming is sponsored by Red Bull, Astro Gaming, Scuf Gaming, and Lootcrate. Valve, the creator of the up and coming game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, just released info on the Katowice 2015 which will have a prize pool of 250,000 dollars. This may not seem like a lot to games like Dota 2 and League of Legends but this would be the highest prize pool that this game has seen ever. The highest paid player with tournaments and sponsors is Zihiao Chen, in 2015 he made 1,225,354 dollars from playing just Dota 2 alone.

Just like when people watch sports, they watch to improve, to study the pros and try to recreate what plays or tactics they use. The final match at Dreamhack winter 2014, Team LDLC vs. NiP, a completely crowd funded prize pool of 250,000 dollars. 300,000 people watched as history was being made. New plays were being used, as the teams struggled for the win. All those people watched the round winning play. That same play was used so many times that it’s now called the LDLC play by shoutcasters around the world. Numerous youtube channels, with videos describing and showing how to use the pros plays and how effective they are. Pros also try to get the tactical advantage in the sport by using any equipment they have. A good example of this is in the Counter Strike series where you can use a large number of grenades to help you on your mission. You can look up videos on youtube, and they will show you how to use these effectively. There are many websites that can help you with any problem you have and can shape you into a better player. But not all skill comes from watching, practice helps too, Nadeshot says “Playing Call of Duty is the bulk of my day, I play at least 14 hours a day to compete with other pros.”

When people want enjoyment watching their favorite game they head over to twitch.tv, a live streaming website,  hundreds of thousands of people stop by everyday. Any streamer can average a viewer count of 30,000 to 100,000 people at one time. Also for every game there is a strong community of players behind it, people that support and will do anything to keep this game up and running. One of these websites is Reddit.com. On average the Counter Strike: Global Offensive column holds an easy 100,000 people on any different day, and on tournament days this number could double or even triple. The Counter Strike subreddit gets to about 10,000 posts a day from different users around the world. This subreddit is somewhere for people to connect and is really the base of the community for the game. If you wanted to know something your best bet is to look there first. There is a big deal behind betting money on CS:GO games as well. millions of dollars a month transferred through one website, CSGOlounge.com, people come here and pick games they want to bet on and select a price of what they want to bet.The only games they could bet on are pro matches so they knew they were legit.  This is all real money and i've even saw people lose all of their money and then i've seen people win millions. One person in particular is a streamer on twitch under the alias M0e_tv. He put up a talk show on this website where he would give betting advice because he knows all of the pro teams and has been watching the for years. He helped a lot of people but lost tons of money in the end. He stopped his show after the NA match setting scandal last year. The top North American team iBuyPower, was purposely losing their games and secretly betting on the games against themselves with tons of money. They did this because they compony that they were sponsored by was paying them enough so they resulted in trying to make money this way, and betting on any games in the same league as your team is in, is forbidden and will have consequences. This was eventually found out by the company and all five players were banned indefinitely. They are no longer allowed to compete in any tournaments. Other websites contribute to the community as well. Forums are a big part of the community, This is where people share there info about games. A forum like this could be reddit.com.

If you asked a random person on the street, could video games be a sport? What do you think they would say? If they said no they would probably say it's because you don't have to move or have an physical strength. But what about sports like chess? They have no physical attributes to their sport either, but the champion from 2013 made 1.5 million dollars from one championship. Some people may say that it's not competitive enough, but its five vs five and there is money on the line(Savov, 2014). The definition of the word sport by the 2015 dictionary says that it can be an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature. The U.S. government also recognises esports as sports and pro players and pro athletes.

People go all over the world to see the best compete, no matter where they are. Pros get the opportunity at very large sums of money, at all times of the year. They practice, go to tournaments, and compete just like other professional sports. It can get very competitive quickly when people jobs are at stake.