eSports Video Games – The Most Popular Games and the Biggest Tournaments
Starting from the 90s era, eSports have evolved from merely being competitions amongst a handful of teams and friends from the local area, to a global phenomenon. If you look at the biggest games in eSports as of now, DOTA 2 is right up there, on the front. Its international tournament held in 2018 featured a massive price pot of $ 25 million.
Furthermore, these eSports tournaments also attract a great deal of action in the betting world, creating an even bigger parallel market. If you too love all such games and would also like to venture into the betting side of them, you can go through this Bet365 review and bet with one of the most well-known and reputed sportsbook in the world.
More on popular eSports games and their tournaments
In the second spot after DOTA 2 is the most widely known first person shooter game – CS:GO (Counter Strike : Global Offensive) which has a very large and loyal gamers base in all parts of the world. It has grown massively in popularity ever since it came on the scene in 2012. In fact, there are several regional tournaments held for this game, and it also emerged as the fourth most popular game for the quarter ending March 2019.
Following CS:GO is Blizzard’s shooter game ‘Overwatch’, which was released only 3 years ago and rapidly grew its user base to a whopping 40 million people in only 2 years, earning them more than $ 1 billion in revenues. The official tournament of this game called ‘The Overwatch League’ is presently in its second year and its finals are held at the Blizzard Arena, featuring a prize money of $ 3.5 million.
Coming close in the fourth place is the widely popular League of Legends, that has a player base exceeding 120 million people all over the world, making it the biggest eSports title if we talk about the player base in specific. League of Legends World Championships are held in big national stadiums as they attract tens of thousands of spectators.
Lastly, there is the first person shooter game called Rainbow Six Siege, belonging to the Tom Clancy franchise. This game has a player base of close to 20 million people world over, and is also one of the most rapidly growing eSports title in the world.
Final Word
Year 2019 is expected to be pretty exciting for eSports. Not only because of the games and tournaments that we’ve mentioned above, but also for some of the new age eSports games like Battle Royal games Apex Legends and Fortnite.
Fortnite is gaining rapid popularity everywhere and is presently in its World Cup stage, with thousands of players fighting for a spot in the finals. Apex Legends on the other hand has introduced a new angle to the Battle Royal and was reported to be the second most played eSports game in the quarter ending March 2019. It will soon start hosting its own tournaments in the times to come.