From today's Economist Expresso23 Nov 2018 10:05
Gamers of the world, unite: eSports
America’s largest eSports facility opens tomorrow in Arlington, Texas. It will hold up to 2,500 video-gamers, who will gather to watch each other compete amid strobe lights, LED screens and thundering music. E-sports—as competitive gaming is known—are booming, on track to generate $906m in revenue worldwide this year, up 38% from 2017. Most fans tune into matches online: Twitch, a streaming service owned by Amazon, counts 140m viewers per month. But increasingly firms are staging live events, lured by ticket sales and the chance to nurture an avid fanbase. There have been 45 big tournaments so far this year. In other ways, too, competitive gaming looks like professional sports of the analogue kind, with leagues, sponsors and multi-million-dollar prizes on offer. Most people still think of gamers as maladjusted teens who hole up for hours in the dark, alone but for their consoles. Turns out they like each other’s company.