126-1668: This is a list of international competitive video-gaming championship events for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne . [REDACTED] Anaheim [REDACTED] Shanghai [REDACTED] Foshan [REDACTED] Xi'an [REDACTED] Shanghai [REDACTED] Shanghai [REDACTED] Shanghai [REDACTED] Beijing [REDACTED] Beijing [REDACTED] Shanghai [REDACTED] Shanghai [REDACTED] Shanghai [REDACTED] Shanghai [REDACTED] Shanghai [REDACTED] Shanghai [REDACTED] Shanghai [REDACTED] Shanghai [REDACTED] Shanghai [REDACTED] Yinchuan [REDACTED] Wuhan [REDACTED] Shanghai [REDACTED] Shanghai [REDACTED] Beijing [REDACTED] Yinchuan [REDACTED] Yinchuan [REDACTED] Hangzhou [REDACTED] Kunshan [REDACTED] Kunshan [REDACTED] Busan [REDACTED] Yongin [REDACTED] Wuhan [REDACTED] Los Angeles [REDACTED] Hangzhou [REDACTED] Paris [REDACTED] Anaheim [REDACTED] Seoul [REDACTED] Berlin [REDACTED] Suwon [REDACTED] Beijing [REDACTED] Cheonan [REDACTED] Chengdu [REDACTED] Beijing [REDACTED] Chengdu [REDACTED] Anaheim [REDACTED] Seoul [REDACTED] Chengdu [REDACTED] Wuhan [REDACTED] Wuhan Esports Esports ( / ˈ iː s p ɔːr t s / ), short for electronic sports ,
252-423: A mind sport . Former ESPN president John Skipper described esports in 2014 as a competition and "not a sport". In 2013 on an episode of Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel the panelist openly laughed at the topic. In addition, many in the fighting games community maintain a distinction between their competitive gaming competitions and the more commercially connected esports competitions of other genres. In
378-408: A network for playback using a media player . Media is transferred in a stream of packets from a server to a client and is rendered in real-time; this contrasts with file downloading , a process in which the end-user obtains an entire media file before consuming the content. Streaming is presently most prevalent in video-on-demand , streaming television , and music streaming services over
504-514: A bandwidth of 1.4 Mbit/s for uncompressed CD audio , while raw digital video requires a bandwidth of 168 Mbit/s for SD video and over 1000 Mbit/s for FHD video. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, users had increased access to computer networks, especially the Internet. During the early 2000s, users had access to increased network bandwidth , especially in the last mile . These technological improvements facilitated
630-498: A football game). Streaming media is increasingly being coupled with the use of social media. For example, sites such as YouTube encourage social interaction in webcasts through features such as live chat , online surveys , user posting of comments online, and more. Furthermore, streaming media is increasingly being used for social business and e-learning . The Horowitz Research State of Pay TV, OTT, and SVOD 2017 report said that 70 percent of those viewing content did so through
756-700: A high score record-keeping organization. The organization went on to help promote video games and publicize its records through publications such as the Guinness Book of World Records, and in 1983 it created the U.S. National Video Game Team . The team was involved in competitions, such as running the Video Game Masters Tournament for Guinness World Records and sponsoring the North American Video Game Challenge tournament. A multicity tour in 1983,
882-424: A large market, the law raised concerns about the future of esports within the country. Labeling competitive video games as a sport is a controversial topic. Proponents argue that esports are a fast-growing "non-traditional sport" which requires "careful planning, precise timing, and skillful execution". Others claim that sports involve physical fitness and physical training, and prefer to classify esports as
1008-606: A marketing stunt to promote their early arcade snake game Hustle in the United States, involving the "Gremlin Girls" who were a duo of professional female arcade players called Sabrina Osment and Lynn Reid. The pair travelled across 19 American cities, where players could challenge them in best-of-three matches for a chance to win money. The duo were challenged by a total of 1,300 players, only about seven of whom managed to beat them. The golden age of arcade video games
1134-457: A medal event at the 2022 edition ; esports around games such as Hearthstone , Starcraft II , and League of Legends were presented as an exhibition event at the 2018 Asian Games as a lead-in to the 2022 games. The 2019 Southeast Asian Games included six medal events for esports. Since 2018, World Sailing has held an eSailing World Championship that showed a main sports federation embracing esports. The Virtual Regatta race shadowing
1260-553: A media player known as ActiveMovie in 1995 that supported streaming media and included a proprietary streaming format, which was the precursor to the streaming feature later in Windows Media Player 6.4 in 1999. In June 1999, Apple also introduced a streaming media format in its QuickTime 4 application. It was later also widely adopted on websites, along with RealPlayer and Windows Media streaming formats. The competing formats on websites required each user to download
1386-464: A method called true streaming . True streaming sends the information straight to the computer or device without saving it to a local file. On-demand streaming is provided by a method called progressive download . Progressive download saves the received information to a local file and then plays it from that location. On-demand streams are often saved to files for extended period of time, while live streams are only available at one time only (e.g., during
SECTION 10
#17327801161061512-472: A music streaming platform offering subscription-based services to over 4.5 million users as of January 2017 . The music industry's response to music streaming was initially negative. Along with music piracy, streaming services disrupted the market and contributed to the fall in US revenue from $ 14.6 billion in 1999 to $ 6.3 billion in 2009. CDs and single-track downloads were not selling because content
1638-565: A new partnership with their National Olympic Committee . The proposal was ultimately approved by a unanimous vote on 23 July 2024. A number of games are popular among professional competitors. The tournaments which emerged in the mid-1990s coincided with the popularity of fighting games and first-person shooters , genres which still maintain a devoted fan base. In the 2000s, real-time strategy games became overwhelmingly popular in South Korean internet cafés , with crucial influence on
1764-495: A non-technical option for listening to audio streams. These audio-streaming services became increasingly popular; music streaming reached 4 trillion streams globally in 2023 -- a significant increase from 2022 -- jumping 34% over the year. In general, multimedia content is data-intensive, so media storage and transmission costs are still significant. Media is generally compressed for transport and storage. Increasing consumer demand for streaming high-definition (HD) content has led
1890-582: A paid television model renamed GIGA II from June 2006 to autumn 2007. The French channel Game One broadcast esports matches in a show called Arena Online for the Xfire Trophy. The United States channel ESPN2 hosted Madden NFL competitions in a show called Madden Nation from 2005 to 2008. DirecTV broadcast the Championship Gaming Series tournament for two seasons in 2007 and 2008. CBS aired prerecorded footage of
2016-547: A potential method to legitimize esports. A summit held by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in October 2017 acknowledged the growing popularity of esports, concluding that "Competitive 'esports' could be considered as a sporting activity, and the players involved prepare and train with an intensity which may be comparable to athletes in traditional sports" but would require any games used for
2142-635: A seismic shift in the film & TV industry in terms of how films are made, distributed, and screened. Many industries have been hit by the economic effects of the pandemic" (Totaro Donato). In August 2022, a CNN headline declared that "The streaming wars are over" as pandemic-era restrictions had largely ended and audience growth had stalled. This led services to focus on profit over market share by cutting production budgets, cracking down on password sharing, and introducing ad-supported tiers. A December 2022 article in The Verge echoed this, declaring an end to
2268-485: A song, it did not diminish another user from doing the same. Napster, like most other providers of public goods, faced the free-rider problem . Every user benefits when an individual uploads an mp3 file, but there is no requirement or mechanism that forces all users to share their music. Generally, the platform encouraged sharing; users who downloaded files from others often had their own files available for upload as well. However, not everyone chose to share their files. There
2394-455: A streaming service and that 40 percent of TV viewing was done this way, twice the number from five years earlier. Millennials , the report said, streamed 60 percent of the content. One of the movie streaming industry's largest impacts was on the DVD industry, which drastically dropped in popularity and profitability with the mass popularization of online content. The rise of media streaming caused
2520-711: A surge in participation by professional gamers and spectators. By the 2010s, esports was a major part of the video game industry, with many game developers designing for and funding for tournaments and other events. Esports first became popular in East Asia , particularly in China and South Korea (which first licensed professional players in 2000) but less so in Japan , whose broad anti-gambling laws prohibit professional gaming tournaments. Esports are also popular in Europe and
2646-508: A tournament held by several video game publishers to award prizes to many players but with JeSU offering these exemption licenses to the top dozen or so players that emerge, allowing them to compete in further esports events. The Tokyo Olympic Committee has also planned to arrange a number of esports events leading up to the 2020 games. With the IOC, five esports events were set as part of an Olympic Virtual Series from 13 May to 23 June 2021, ahead of
SECTION 20
#17327801161062772-430: Is a form of competition using video games . Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, played individually or as teams. Multiplayer competitions were long a part of video game culture , but were largely between amateurs until the late 2000s, when the advent of online streaming media platforms, particularly YouTube and Twitch , enabled
2898-600: Is also thought that the high unemployment rate at the time caused many people to look for things to do while out of work. Instrumental to this growth of esports in South Korea was the prevalence of the Komany-style internet café / LAN gaming center , known as a PC bang . The Korean e-Sports Association , an arm of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism , was founded in 2000 to promote and regulate esports in
3024-500: Is intrinsic to how it works. It dematerializes music, denies it a crucial measure of autonomy, reality, and power. It makes music seem disposable, impermanent. Hence it intensifies the ebb and flow of pop fashion, the way musical 'memes' rise up for a week or a month and are then forgotten. And it renders our experience of individual artists/groups shallower." — Robert Christgau , 2018 A media stream can be streamed either live or on demand . Live streams are generally provided by
3150-514: Is the civilized expression about this. If you have egames where it's about killing somebody, this cannot be brought into line with our Olympic values." Due to that, the IOC suggested that they would approve more esports centered around games that simulate real sports, such as the NBA 2K or FIFA series. The issues around esports have not prevented the IOC from exploring what possibilities there are for incorporation into future Olympics. In July 2018,
3276-704: The 2020-2021 Vendee Globe was the first online game believe to have in excess of 1,000,000 unique users Ahead of The International 2021 , which was originally set to take place in Stockholm in 2020, the Swedish Sports Confederation voted in June 2021 to deny recognition of esports as a sporting event, which jeopardized plans for how Valve had arranged the event in regards to travel visas for international players. Valve had tried to work with Sweden to accommodate players, but eventually rescheduled
3402-542: The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris were in discussions with the IOC and the various professional esports organizations to consider esports for the event, citing the need to include these elements to keep the Olympics relevant to younger generations. Ultimately, the organization committee determined esports were premature to bring to the 2024 Games as medal events, but have not ruled out other activities related to esports during
3528-518: The Commonwealth Games Federation announced that esports would be included in the 2022 Commonwealth Games as a pilot event, with the possibility of it being a medal event in the 2026 Games . The inaugural Commonwealth Esports Championship had separate branding, medals, and organization and included both men and women's Dota 2 , eFootball , and Rocket League events. As a follow-up to 2021's Olympic Virtual Series,
3654-587: The International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) indicated that remuneration from digital streaming of music increased with a strong rise in digital royalty collection (up 16.6% to EUR 2.4 billion), but it would not compensate the overall loss of income of authors from concerts, public performance and broadcast. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) recompiled
3780-670: The Netscape IPO in 1995 (and the release of Windows 95 with built-in TCP/IP support), usage of the Internet expanded, and many companies "went public" , including Progressive Networks (which was renamed " RealNetworks ", and listed on Nasdaq as "RNWK"). As the web became even more popular in the late 90s, streaming video on the internet blossomed from startups such as Vivo Software (later acquired by RealNetworks), VDOnet (acquired by RealNetworks), Precept (acquired by Cisco ), and Xing (acquired by RealNetworks). Microsoft developed
3906-700: The Nintendo PowerFest '94 . There were 132 finalists that played in the finals in San Diego , California. Mike Iarossi took home 1st prize. Blockbuster Video also ran their own World Game Championships in the early 1990s, co-hosted by GamePro magazine. Citizens from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Chile were eligible to compete. Games from the 1994 championships included NBA Jam and Virtua Racing . Television shows featuring esports during this period include
List of Warcraft III championships - Misplaced Pages Continue
4032-689: The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) also filed a lawsuit against Napster on the grounds of unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material, which ultimately led Napster to shut down in 2001. In an interview with the New York Times , Gary Stiffelman, who represents Eminem , Aerosmith , and TLC , explained, "I'm not an opponent of artists' music being included in these services, I'm just an opponent of their revenue not being shared." The lawsuit A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc. fundamentally changed
4158-551: The Tokyo Olympic Games Committee for the 2020 Summer Olympics, four esports organizations have worked with Japan's leading consumer organization to exempt esports tournaments from gambling law restrictions. Takeo Kawamura , a member of the Japanese House of Representatives and of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party , led a coalition of ruling and opposing politicians to support esports, called
4284-649: The digital collectible card game (DCCG) genre since its release in 2014. While it is common for video games to be designed with the experience of the player in game being the only priority, many successful esports games have been designed to be played professionally from the beginning. Developers may decide to add dedicated esports features, or even make design compromises to support high level competition. Games such as StarCraft II , League of Legends , and Dota 2 have all been designed, at least in part, to support professional competition. Streaming media Streaming media refers to multimedia delivered through
4410-671: The eGames , was held alongside the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro , though this was not supported by the IOC. During the Eighth Olympic Summit in December 2019, the IOC reiterated that it would only consider sports-simulating games for any official Olympic event, but it would look at two paths for such games in the future: those that promoted good physical and mental health lifestyles, and virtual reality and augmented reality games that included physical activity. In
4536-441: The "Electronic Circus", was used to feature these players in live challenges before audiences, and draw more people to video games. These video game players and tournaments were featured in well-circulated newspapers and popular magazines including Life and Time and became minor celebrities at the time, such as Billy Mitchell . Besides establishing the competitive nature of games, these types of promotional events all formed
4662-708: The "golden age of the streaming wars". In September 2023, several streaming services formed a trade association named the Streaming Innovation Alliance (SIA), spearheaded by Charles Rivkin of the Motion Picture Association (MPA). Former U.S. representative Fred Upton and former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) acting chair Mignon Clyburn serve as senior advisors. Founding members include AfroLandTV, America Nu Network, BET+ , Discovery+ , Disney+ , Disney+ Hotstar , ESPN+ , For Us By Us Network, Hulu , Max ,
4788-544: The 'streaming' terminology was often a confusion factor. In 1969 Grumman acquired one of the first telemetry ground stations [Automated Telemetry Station, 'ATS'] which had the capability for reconstructing serial telemetered data which had been recorded on digital computer peripheral tapes. Computer peripheral tapes were inherently recorded in blocks. Reconstruction was required for continuous display purposes without time-base distortion. The Navy implemented similar capability in DoD for
4914-491: The 1990s and has since grown to become the globally most popular method for consuming music and video, with numerous competing subscription services being offered since the 2010s. Audio streaming to wireless speakers , often using Bluetooth, is another use that has become prevalent during that decade. Live streaming is the real-time delivery of content during production, much as live television broadcasts content via television channels. Distinguishing delivery methods from
5040-568: The 1990s led to the foundation of the international Evolution Championship Series (EVO) esports tournament in 1996. Large esports tournaments in the 1990s include the 1990 Nintendo World Championships , which toured across the United States, and held its finals at Universal Studios Hollywood in California. Nintendo held a 2nd World Championships in 1994 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System called
5166-471: The 2007 World Series of Video Games tournament that was held in Louisville, Kentucky . The G4 television channel originally covered video games exclusively, but broadened its scope to cover technology and men's lifestyle, though has now shutdown. During the 2010s, esports grew tremendously, incurring a large increase in both viewership and prize money. Although large tournaments were founded before
List of Warcraft III championships - Misplaced Pages Continue
5292-578: The 2015 World Championship hosted by the International Esports Federation , an esports panel of guests from international sports society discussed the future recognition of esports as a legitimate sport. Russia was the first country that classified "cybersport" as an official sport discipline on 25 July 2001. After a series of reforms in Russian sports, it was classified as a sport again on 12 March 2004. In July 2006, it
5418-561: The 21st century, the number and scope of tournaments has increased significantly, going from about 10 tournaments in 2000 to about 260 in 2010. Many successful tournaments were founded during this period, including the World Cyber Games , the Intel Extreme Masters , and Major League Gaming . The proliferation of tournaments included experimentation with competitions outside traditional esports genres. For example,
5544-520: The Americas , which host regional and international events. The most common video game genres associated with esports are multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), first-person shooter (FPS), fighting games , card , battle royales , and real-time strategy (RTS) games. Popular esports franchises include League of Legends , Dota , Counter-Strike , Valorant , Overwatch , Street Fighter , Super Smash Bros. and StarCraft . Among
5670-748: The British shows GamesMaster and Bad Influence! ; the Australian game show A*mazing , where in the final round contestants competed in a video game face-off; and the Canadian game show Video & Arcade Top 10 . In the 1990s, many games benefited from increasing internet connectivity , especially PC games . Inspired by the fighting games Street Fighter II , Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting , id Software 's John Romero established competitive multiplayer in online games with Doom ' s deathmatch mode in 1993. Tournaments established in
5796-608: The French government started working on a project to regulate and recognize esports. The Games and Amusements Board of the Philippines started issuing athletic licenses to Filipino esports players who are vouched for by a professional esports team in July 2017. To help promote esports as a legitimate sport, several esports events have been run alongside more traditional international sports competitions. The 2007 Asian Indoor Games
5922-647: The Games. In September 2021, the Olympic Council of Asia announced eight esports games will officially debut as medal sports for the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou, China. In December 2021, the IOC confirmed its Olympic Virtual Series (OVS) will return in 2022. The first edition of the OVS which ran from 13 May to 23 June, featured nearly 250,000 participants and had more than two million entries. In January 2022,
6048-521: The IOC and the Global Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF) held a symposium and invited major figures in esports, including Epic Games ' Mark Rein , Blizzard Entertainment 's Mike Morhaime , and esports players Dario "TLO" Wünsch, Jacob "Jake" Lyon , and Se-yeon "Geguri" Kim , for these organizations "to gain a deeper understanding of esports, their impact and likely future development, so that [they] can jointly consider
6174-709: The IOC and the Singapore National Olympic Council held the inaugural Olympic Esports Week in Singapore in June 2023. Games featured at the event included: In June 2024, the IOC Executive Board announced the proposal to establish the Olympic Esports Games during the 142nd IOC Session held prior to the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, with the inaugural event to take place in 2025 at Saudi Arabia following
6300-516: The IOC announced the appointment of the organization's first ever head of virtual sport, tasked with the development of virtual sport for the global Olympic body, increasing the organization's engagement with gaming communities, and overseeing the Olympic Virtual Series, IOC's first licensed non-physical sports event. The inaugural series included virtual baseball, cycling, rowing, esailing and motorsports events. In February 2022,
6426-439: The Internet. While streaming is most commonly associated with multimedia from a remote server over the Internet, it also includes offline multimedia between devices on a local area network , for example using DLNA and a home server , or in a personal area network between two devices using Bluetooth (which uses radio waves rather than IP ). Online streaming was initially popularised by RealNetworks and Microsoft in
SECTION 50
#17327801161066552-517: The Japan esports Union, or JeSU. Kawamura said that they would be willing to pass laws to further exempt esports as needed so that esports athletes can make a living playing these sports. So far, this has resulted in the ability of esports players to obtain exemption licenses to allow them to play, a similar mechanism needed for professional athletes in other sports in Japan to play professionally. The first such licenses were given out in mid-July 2018, via
6678-467: The MPA, MotorTrend+, Netflix , Paramount+ , Peacock , Pluto TV , Star+ , Telemundo , TelevisaUnivision , Vault TV, and Vix . Notably absent were Apple , Amazon , Roku , and Tubi . Advances in computer networking , combined with powerful home computers and operating systems, have made streaming media affordable and easy for the public. Stand-alone Internet radio devices emerged to offer listeners
6804-490: The Ministry stating that they anticipate over 2 million such people in this profession in five years. In 2013, Canadian League of Legends player Danny "Shiphtur" Le became the first pro gamer to receive an American P-1A visa , a category designated for "Internationally Recognized Athletes". In 2014, Turkey's Ministry of Youth and Sports started issuing esports licenses to players certified as professionals. In 2016,
6930-513: The Olympics fitting "with the rules and regulations of the Olympic movement". Another article by Andy Stout suggests that 106 million people viewed the 2017 Worlds Esports competition . International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach has noted that the IOC is troubled by violent games and the lack of a global sanctioning body for esports. Bach acknowledged that many Olympic sports originated from violent combat, but stated that "sport
7056-502: The September 2006 FUN Technologies Worldwide Webgames Championship featured 71 contestants competing in casual games for a $ 1 million grand prize. The popularity and emergence of online streaming services have helped the growth of esports in this period, and are the most common method of watching tournaments. Twitch , an online streaming platform launched in 2011, routinely streams popular esports competitions. In 2013, viewers of
7182-518: The band was playing a gig at Xerox PARC , while elsewhere in the building, scientists were discussing new technology (the Mbone ) for broadcasting on the Internet using multicasting . As proof of PARC's technology, the band's performance was broadcast and could be seen live in Australia and elsewhere. In a March 2017 interview, band member Russ Haines stated that the band had used approximately "half of
7308-772: The broadcast of a baseball game between the New York Yankees and the Seattle Mariners over the Internet in 1995. The first symphonic concert on the Internet—a collaboration between the Seattle Symphony and guest musicians Slash , Matt Cameron , and Barrett Martin —took place at the Paramount Theater in Seattle , Washington, on 10 November 1995. In 1996, Marc Scarpa produced
7434-470: The competition. In 2015, the first Esports Arena was launched in Santa Ana, California , as the United States' first dedicated esports facility. The global esports audience reached 662.6 million in 2020, and 921 million in 2022. In 2021, China announced a law which forbade minors from playing video games, which they described as "spiritual opium", for more than three hours a week. With China being
7560-505: The concept of direct, tournament-level competition between two players. Previously, video games most often relied on high scores to determine the best player, but this changed with Street Fighter II , where players would instead challenge each other directly, "face-to-face", to determine the best player, paving the way for the competitive multiplayer and deathmatch modes found in modern action games . The popularity of fighting games such as Street Fighter and Marvel vs. Capcom in
7686-552: The country. Physical viewership of esports competitions and the scope of events have increased in tandem with the growth of online viewership. In 2013, the Season 3 League of Legends World Championship was held in a sold-out Staples Center . The 2014 League of Legends World Championship in Seoul , South Korea, had over 40,000 fans in attendance and featured the band Imagine Dragons , and opening and closing ceremonies in addition to
SECTION 60
#17327801161067812-731: The country. Minister of Culture, Sports, and Tourism Park Jie-won coined the term "Esports" at the founding ceremony of the 21st Century Professional Game Association (currently Korean e-Sports Association ) in 2000. " Evo Moment 37 ", also known as the "Daigo Parry", refers to a portion of a Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike semi-final match held at Evolution Championship Series 2004 (Evo 2004) between Daigo Umehara (playing Ken Masters ) and Justin Wong (playing Chun-Li ). During this match, Umehara made an unexpected comeback by parrying 15 consecutive hits of Wong's "Super Art" move while having only one pixel of vitality . Umehara subsequently won
7938-472: The creation of numerous other P2P sites, including LimeWire (2000), BitTorrent (2001), and the Pirate Bay (2003). The reign of P2P networks was short-lived. The first to fall was Napster in 2001. Numerous lawsuits were filed against Napster by various record labels, all of which were subsidiaries of Universal Music Group , Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group , or EMI . In addition to this,
8064-905: The creation of the Halo Championship Series and a prize pool of US$ 50,000. Both Blizzard Entertainment and Riot Games have their own collegiate outreach programs with their North American Collegiate Championship. Since 2013 universities and colleges in the United States such as Robert Morris University Illinois and the University of Pikeville have recognized esports players as varsity level athletes and offer athletic scholarships . In 2017, Tespa , Blizzard Entertainment's collegiate esports division, unveiled its new initiative to provide scholarships and prizes for collegiate esports clubs competing in its tournaments worth US$ 1 million. Colleges have begun granting scholarships to students who qualify to play esports professionally for
8190-399: The development of esports worldwide. Competitions exist for many titles and genres, though the most popular games as of the early 2020s are Counter-Strike: Global Offensive , Call of Duty , League of Legends , Dota 2 , Fortnite , Rocket League , Valorant , Hearthstone , Super Smash Bros. Melee , StarCraft II and Overwatch . Hearthstone has also popularized
8316-403: The downfall of many DVD rental companies, such as Blockbuster . In July 2015, The New York Times published an article about Netflix 's DVD services. It stated that Netflix was continuing their DVD services with 5.3 million subscribers, which was a significant drop from the previous year. On the other hand, their streaming service had 65 million members. Music streaming is one of
8442-448: The early 2010s, viewership was about 85% male and 15% female, with most viewers between the ages of 18 and 34. By the late 2010s, it was estimated that by 2020, the total audience of esports would grow to 454 million viewers, with revenue increasing to more than US$ 1 billion, with China accounting for 35% of the global esports revenue. The earliest known video game competition took place on 19 October 1972 at Stanford University for
8568-498: The esports scene, Nintendo hosted Wii Games Summer 2010. Spanning over a month, the tournament had over 400,000 participants, making it the largest and most expansive tournament in the company's history. In 2014 Nintendo hosted an invitational Super Smash Bros. for Wii U competitive tournament at the 2014 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) press conference that was streamed online on Twitch. Halo developers 343 Industries announced in 2014 plans to revive Halo as an esport with
8694-482: The event to Romania instead. The 2022 Commonwealth Games featured esports competitions as a pilot ahead of being a potential full medal event for 2026. In Greece , in March 2022 a law entered into force recognising and regulating esports and in June 2023, the relevant federation for esports has been officially given recognition and included in the list of sports federations. The Olympic Games are also seen as
8820-499: The files available on Napster may be copyrighted and more than seventy percent may be owned or administered by plaintiffs." The injunction ordered against Napster ended the brief period in which music streaming was a public good – non-rival and non-excludable in nature. Other P2P networks had some success at sharing MP3s, though they all met a similar fate in court. The ruling set the precedent that copyrighted digital content cannot be freely replicated and shared unless given consent by
8946-434: The first commercial Ethernet switch was introduced by Kalpana , which enabled the more powerful computer networks that led to the first streaming video solutions used by schools and corporations. Practical streaming media was only made possible with advances in data compression due to the impractically high bandwidth requirements of uncompressed media. Raw digital audio encoded with pulse-code modulation (PCM) requires
9072-437: The first half of 2016 and accounted for almost half of industry sales. The term streaming wars was coined to describe the new era (starting in the late 2010s) of competition between video streaming services such as Netflix , Amazon Prime Video , Hulu , Max , Disney+ , Paramount+ , Apple TV+ , Peacock , and many more. The competition among online platforms has driven them to find ways to differentiate themselves from
9198-473: The first large-scale, online, live broadcast, the Adam Yauch –led Tibetan Freedom Concert , an event that would define the format of social change broadcasts. Scarpa continued to pioneer in the streaming media world with projects such as Woodstock '99 , Townhall with President Clinton , and more recently Covered CA's campaign "Tell a Friend Get Covered", which was livestreamed on YouTube. Xing Technology
9324-413: The first time in 1973. These implementations are the only known examples of true 'streaming' in the sense of reconstructing distortion-free serial data from packetized or blocked recordings. 'Real-time' terminology has also been confusing in streaming context. The most accepted definition of 'real-time' requires that all associated processing or formatting of the data must take place prior to availability of
9450-410: 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 Slim Tovar and Robert E. Maas winning the team competition. Contemporary esports has roots in competitive face-to-face arcade video game competitions. A forerunner of esports
9576-709: The games. Each event in auto racing, baseball, cycling, rowing and sailing will be managed by an IOC-recognized governing body for the sport along with a video game publisher of a game for that sport. For example, the auto racing event will be based on the Gran Turismo series and overseen by the International Automobile Federation along with Polyphony Digital . The baseball, cycling, and esailing events will be based on eBaseball Powerful Pro Baseball 2020 , Zwift , and Virtual Regatta , respectively. The organization committee for
9702-524: The government encouraged esports, stating that by participating in esports, players were also "training the body for China". Furthermore, by early 2019, China recognized esports players as an official profession within the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security 's Occupation Skill Testing Authority recommendations, as well as professional gaming operators, those that distribute and manage esports games. By July 2019, more than 100,000 people had registered themselves as professional gamers under this, with
9828-413: The industry to develop technologies such as WirelessHD and G.hn , which are optimized for streaming HD content. Many developers have introduced HD streaming apps that work on smaller devices, such as tablets and smartphones, for everyday purposes. "Streaming creates the illusion—greatly magnified by headphone use, which is another matter—that music is a utility you can turn on and off; the water metaphor
9954-558: The interactivity of the Web. The ability to collect data and feedback from potential customers caused this technology to gain momentum quickly. Around 2002, the interest in a single, unified, streaming format and the widespread adoption of Adobe Flash prompted the development of a video streaming format through Flash, which was the format used in Flash-based players on video hosting sites. The first popular video streaming site, YouTube,
10080-575: The judge for this case, noted that Napster claimed that its services fit "three specific alleged fair uses: sampling , where users make temporary copies of a work before purchasing; space-shifting, where users access a sound recording through the Napster system that they already own in audio CD format; and permissive distribution of recordings by both new and established artists." Judge Beezer found that Napster did not fit these criteria, instead enabling their users to repeatedly copy music, which would affect
10206-523: The jukebox, and ask the operator to play a song. The operator would find the record in the studio library of more than 100,000 records, put it on a turntable, and the music would be piped over the telephone line to play in the tavern. The music media began as 78s, 33s and 45s, played on the six turntables they monitored. CDs and tapes were incorporated in later years. The business had a succession of owners, notably Bill Purse, his daughter Helen Reutzel, and finally Dotti White. The revenue stream for each quarter
10332-432: The late 1980s through the 1990s, consumer-grade personal computers became powerful enough to display various media. The primary technical issues related to streaming were having enough CPU and bus bandwidth to support the required data rates and achieving the real-time computing performance required to prevent buffer underruns and enable smooth streaming of the content. However, computer networks were still limited in
10458-690: The late 1990s include the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL), QuakeCon , and the Professional Gamers League . PC games played at the CPL included the Counter-Strike series, Quake series, StarCraft , and Warcraft . The growth of esports in South Korea is thought to have been influenced by the mass building of broadband Internet networks following the 1997 Asian financial crisis . It
10584-409: The late 2010s, leaders in Japan became involved in helping bring esports to the 2020 Summer Olympics and beyond, given the country's reputation as a major video game industry centre. Esports in Japan had not flourished due to the country's anti-gambling laws that also prevent paid professional gaming tournaments, but there were efforts starting in late 2017 to eliminate this issue. At the suggestion of
10710-457: The market value of the copyrighted good. The second claim by the plaintiffs was that Napster was actively contributing to copyright infringement since it had knowledge of widespread file sharing on its platform. Since Napster took no action to reduce infringement and financially benefited from repeated use, the court ruled against the P2P site. The court found that "as much as eighty-seven percent of
10836-523: The match. "Evo Moment #37" is frequently described as the most iconic and memorable moment in the history of competitive video gaming. Being at one point the most-watched competitive gaming moment of all time, it has been compared to sports moments such as Babe Ruth's called shot and the Miracle on Ice . In April 2006, the G7 teams federation were formed by seven prominent Counter-Strike teams. The goal of
10962-427: The media applies specifically to, as most of the traditional media delivery systems are either inherently streaming (e.g., radio, television) or inherently non-streaming (e.g., books, videotapes , audio CDs ). The term "streaming media" can apply to media other than video and audio, such as live closed captioning , ticker tape , and real-time text , which are all considered "streaming text". The term "streaming"
11088-430: The mid-1990s, and audio and video media were usually delivered over non-streaming channels, such as playback from a local hard disk drive or CD-ROMs on the end user's computer. Terminology in the 1970's was at best confusing for applications such as telemetered aircraft or missile test data. By then PCM [Pulse Code Modulation] was the dominant transmission type. This PCM transmission was bit-serial and not packetized so
11214-403: The misnomer "store and forward video." Beginning in 1881, Théâtrophone enabled subscribers to listen to opera and theatre performances over telephone lines. This operated until 1932. The concept of media streaming eventually came to America. In the early 1920s, George Owen Squier was granted patents for a system for the transmission and distribution of signals over electrical lines, which
11340-757: The most popular tournaments are the League of Legends World Championship , Dota 2 's International , the fighting game-specific Evolution Championship Series (EVO) and Intel Extreme Masters . Many other competitions use a series of league play with sponsored teams, such as the Overwatch League . Although the legitimacy of esports as a true sporting competition remains in question, they have been featured alongside traditional sports in some multinational events in Asia. The International Olympic Committee has discussed their inclusion in future Olympic events. In
11466-493: The most popular ways in which consumers interact with streaming media. In the age of digitization, the private consumption of music has transformed into a public good , largely due to one player in the market: Napster. Napster , a peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing network where users could upload and download MP3 files freely, broke all music industry conventions when it launched in early 1999 in Hull, Massachusetts. The platform
11592-479: The music industry by making songs that previously required payment to be freely accessible to any Napster user, but it also demonstrated the power of P2P networks in turning any digital file into a public, shareable good. For the brief period of time that Napster existed, mp3 files fundamentally changed as a type of good. Songs were no longer financially excludable, barring access to a computer with internet access, and they were not rivals, meaning if one person downloaded
11718-698: The music industry initiatives around the world related to the COVID-19. In its State of the Industry report, it recorded that the global recorded music market grew by 7.4% in 2022, the 6th consecutive year of growth. This growth was driven by streaming, mostly from paid subscription streaming revenues which increased by 18.5%, fueled by 443 million users of subscription accounts by the end of 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has also driven an increase in misinformation and disinformation, particularly on streaming platforms like YouTube and podcasts . Streaming also refers to
11844-421: The nature of the marketing and promotion that formed the basis of modern esports. In 1984, Konami and Centuri jointly held an international Track & Field arcade game competition that drew more than a million players from across Japan and North America. Play Meter in 1984 called it "the coin-op event of the year" and an "event on a scale never before achieved in the industry". As of 2016 , it holds
11970-571: The next sample of each measurement. In the 1970s the most powerful mainframe computers were not fast enough for this task at significant overall data rates in the range of 50,000 samples per second. For that reason both the Grumman ATS and the Navy Real-time Telemetry Processing System [RTPS] employed unique special purpose digital computers dedicated to real-time processing of raw data samples. In 1990,
12096-457: The organization was to increase stability in the esports world, particularly in standardizing player transfers and working with leagues and organizations. The founding members were 4Kings , Fnatic , Made in Brazil , Mousesports , NiP , SK-Gaming , and Team 3D . The organization only lasted until 2009 before dissolving. The 2000s was a popular time for televised esports. Television coverage
12222-431: The owner, thereby strengthening the property rights of artists and record labels alike. Although music streaming is no longer a freely replicable public good, streaming platforms such as Spotify , Deezer , Apple Music , SoundCloud , YouTube Music , and Amazon Music have shifted music streaming to a club-type good . While some platforms, most notably Spotify, give customers access to a freemium service that enables
12348-467: The platform watched 12 billion minutes of video on the service, with the two most popular Twitch broadcasters being League of Legends and Dota 2 . During one day of The International, Twitch recorded 4.5 million unique views, with each viewer watching for an average of two hours. The modern esports boom has also seen a rise in video games companies embracing the esports potential of their products. After many years of ignoring and at times suppressing
12474-633: The plot of various films, including 1982's Tron . In the UK, the BBC game show First Class included competitive video game rounds featuring the contemporary arcade games, such as Hyper Sports , 720° and Paperboy . In the United States, the Amusement Players Association held its first U.S. National Video Game Team competition in January 1987, where Vs. Super Mario Bros.
12600-537: The record for the largest organized video game competition of all time, according to Guinness World Records . Televised esports events aired during this period included the American show Starcade which ran from 1982 to 1984 airing a total of 133 episodes, on which contestants would attempt to beat each other's high scores on an arcade game. A video game tournament was included as part of TV show That's Incredible! , and tournaments were also featured as part of
12726-413: The respective applications for streaming, which resulted in many users having to have all three applications on their computer for general compatibility. In 2000, Industryview.com launched its "world's largest streaming video archive" website to help businesses promote themselves. Webcasting became an emerging tool for business marketing and advertising that combined the immersive nature of television with
12852-414: The rest. A key differentiator is offering exclusive content, often self-produced and created for a specific market segment . Research suggests that this approach to streaming competition can be disadvantageous for consumers by increasing spending across platforms, and for the industry as a whole by dilution of subscriber base. Once specific content is made available on a streaming service, piracy searches for
12978-535: The same content decrease; competition or legal availability across multiple platforms appears to deter online piracy. Exclusive content produced for subscription services such as Netflix tends to have a higher production budget than content produced exclusively for pay-per-view services, such as Amazon Prime Video. This competition increased during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic as more people stayed home and watched TV. "The COVID-19 pandemic has led to
13104-419: The school. Colleges such as Columbia College , Robert Morris University , and Indiana Institute of Technology have taken part in this. In 2018, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology began a tuition scholarship program for esports players. In 2014, the largest independent esports league, Electronic Sports League , partnered with the local brand Japan Competitive Gaming to try and grow esports in
13230-405: The streaming of audio and video content to computer users in their homes and workplaces. There was also an increasing use of standard protocols and formats, such as TCP/IP , HTTP , and HTML , as the Internet became increasingly commercialized, which led to an infusion of investment into the sector. The band Severe Tire Damage was the first group to perform live on the Internet. On 24 June 1993,
13356-617: The total bandwidth of the internet" to stream the performance, which was a 152 × 76 pixel video, updated eight to twelve times per second, with audio quality that was, "at best, a bad telephone connection." In October 1994, a school music festival was webcast from the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington, New Zealand. The technician who arranged the webcast, local council employee Richard Naylor, later commented: "We had 16 viewers in 12 countries." RealNetworks pioneered
13482-506: The tournament "proved to be the biggest event ever" in the arcade game industry, and was attended by members from leading Japanese newspapers and leisure industry companies. Sega stressed "the importance of such tournaments to foster better business relationships between the maker-location-customer and create an atmosphere of competition on TV amusement games". In 1977, Gremlin Industries (a year before being acquired by Sega) held
13608-845: The use of limited features for exposure to advertisements, most companies operate under a premium subscription model. Under such circumstances, music streaming is financially excludable, requiring that customers pay a monthly fee for access to a music library, but non-rival, since one customer's use does not impair another's. There is competition between services similar but lesser to the streaming wars for video media. As of 2019 , Spotify has over 207 million users in 78 countries, As of 2018 , Apple Music has about 60 million, and SoundCloud has 175 million. All platforms provide varying degrees of accessibility. Apple Music and Prime Music only offer their services for paid subscribers, whereas Spotify and SoundCloud offer freemium and premium services. Napster, owned by Rhapsody since 2011, has resurfaced as
13734-401: The user. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) revealed through its 2015, earnings report that streaming services were responsible for 34.3 percent of the year's total music industry 's revenue, growing 29 percent from the previous year and becoming the largest source of income, pulling in around $ 2.4 billion. US streaming revenue grew 57 percent to $ 1.6 billion in
13860-716: The way consumers interact with music streaming. It was argued on 2 October 2000, and was decided on 12 February 2001. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that a P2P file-sharing service could be held liable for contributory and vicarious infringement of copyright, serving as a landmark decision for Intellectual property law. The first issue that the Court addressed was fair use , which says that otherwise infringing activities are permissible so long as they are for purposes "such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching [...] scholarship, or research." Judge Beezer,
13986-564: The ways in which [they] may collaborate to the mutual benefit of all of sport in the years ahead". The IOC has tested the potential for esports through exhibition games. With support from the IOC, Intel sponsored exhibition esports events for StarCraft II and Steep prior to the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang , and five South Korean esports players were part of the Olympic Torch relay. A similar exhibition showcase,
14112-480: Was best established in South Korea, with StarCraft and Warcraft III competitions regularly televised by dedicated 24-hour cable TV game channels Ongamenet and MBCGame . Elsewhere, esports television coverage was sporadic. The German GIGA Television covered esports until its shutdown in 2009. The United Kingdom satellite television channel XLEAGUE.TV broadcast esports competitions from 2007 to 2009. The online esports only channel ESL TV briefly attempted
14238-461: Was developed by Shawn and John Fanning as well as Sean Parker . In an interview from 2009, Shawn Fanning explained that Napster "was something that came to me as a result of seeing a sort of unmet need and the passion people had for being able to find all this music, particularly a lot of the obscure stuff, which wouldn't be something you go to a record store and purchase, so it felt like a problem worth solving." Not only did this development disrupt
14364-450: Was first used for tape drives manufactured by Data Electronics Inc. that were meant to slowly ramp up and run for the entire track; slower ramp times lowered drive costs. "Streaming" was applied in the early 1990s as a better description for video on demand and later live video on IP networks . It was first done by Starlight Networks for video streaming and Real Networks for audio streaming. Such video had previously been referred to by
14490-408: Was founded by Steve Chen , Chad Hurley , and Jawed Karim in 2005. It initially used a Flash-based player, which played MPEG-4 AVC video and AAC audio, but now defaults to HTML video . Increasing consumer demand for live streaming prompted YouTube to implement a new live streaming service for users. The company currently also offers a (secure) link that returns the available connection speed of
14616-592: Was founded in 1989 and developed a JPEG streaming product called "StreamWorks". Another streaming product appeared in late 1992 and was named StarWorks. StarWorks enabled on-demand MPEG-1 full-motion videos to be randomly accessed on corporate Ethernet networks. Starworks was from Starlight Networks , which also pioneered live video streaming on Ethernet and via Internet Protocol over satellites with Hughes Network Systems . Other early companies that created streaming media technology include Progressive Networks and Protocomm prior to widespread World Wide Web usage. After
14742-491: Was freely available on the Internet. By 2018, however, music streaming revenue exceeded that of traditional revenue streams (e.g. record sales, album sales, downloads). Streaming revenue is now one of the largest driving forces behind the growth in the music industry. By August 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had streaming services busier than ever. In the UK alone, 12 million people joined a new streaming service that they had not previously had. An impact analysis of 2020 data by
14868-633: Was held by Sega in 1974, the All Japan TV Game Championships, a nationwide arcade video game tournament in Japan. The tournament was intended by Sega to promote the play and sales of video games in the country. There were local tournaments held in 300 locations across Japan, and then sixteen finalists from across the country competed in the final elimination rounds at Tokyo 's Hotel Pacific. Prizes awarded included television sets ( color and black-and-white ), cassette tape recorders and transistor radios . According to Sega,
14994-462: Was heralded by Taito 's Space Invaders in 1978, which popularized the use of a persistent high score for all players. Several video games in the next several years followed suit, adding other means of tracking high scores such with high score tables that included the players' initials in games like Asteroids in 1979. High score-chasing became a popular activity and a means of competition. The Space Invaders Championship held by Atari in 1980
15120-599: Was no a built-in incentive specifically discouraging users from sharing their own files. This structure revolutionized the consumer's perception of ownership over digital goods ; it made music freely replicable. Napster quickly garnered millions of users, growing faster than any other business in history. At the peak of its existence, Napster boasted about 80 million users globally. The site gained so much traffic that many college campuses had to block access to Napster because it created network congestion from so many students sharing music files. The advent of Napster sparked
15246-498: Was popular among competitive arcade players. The 1988 game Netrek was an Internet game for up to 16 players, written almost entirely in cross-platform open-source software . Netrek was the third Internet game , the first Internet game to use metaservers to locate open game servers, and the first to have persistent user information . In 1993 it was credited by Wired Magazine as "the first online sports game". The fighting game Street Fighter II (1991) popularized
15372-434: Was removed from a list of sport disciplines because it did not fit the new sport standards. On 7 July 2016, The Ministry of Sport decided to add cybersport into the sport registry and on 13 April 2017, esports become an official sport discipline once again. China was another one of the first countries to recognize esports as a real sport in 2003, despite concerns at the time that video games were addictive. Through this,
15498-452: Was split between 60% for the music service and 40% for the tavern owner. This business model eventually became unsustainable due to city permits and the cost of setting up these telephone lines. Attempts to display media on computers date back to the earliest days of computing in the mid-20th century. However, little progress was made for several decades, primarily due to the high cost and limited capabilities of computer hardware. From
15624-516: Was the earliest large scale video game competition, attracting more than 10,000 participants across the United States, establishing competitive gaming as a mainstream hobby. It was won by Rebecca Heineman . Walter Day , owner of an arcade in Iowa, had taken it upon himself to travel across the United States to record the high scores on various games in 1980, and on his return, founded Twin Galaxies ,
15750-692: Was the first notable multi-sport competition including esports as an official medal-winning event, alongside other traditional sports, and the later editions of the Asian Indoor Games , as well as its successor the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games , have always included esports as an official medal event or an exhibition event up to now. Moreover, the Asian Games , which is the Asian top-level multi-sport competition, also included esports as
15876-469: Was the technical basis for what later became Muzak , a technology for streaming continuous music to commercial customers without the use of radio. The Telephone Music Service, a live jukebox service, began in 1929 and continued until 1997. The clientele eventually included 120 bars and restaurants in the Pittsburgh area. A tavern customer would deposit money in the jukebox, use a telephone on top of
#105894