Was ist E-Sport?

The first historically known computer game competition took place in 1972 among students at Stanford University. The game played was the space shooter Spacewar! which is considered to be one of the first computer games ever. In 1980, 10,000 participants competed against each other in the national Space Invaders Championship organized by Atari in the USA. One and the same computer system was used for this. In the early 1990s, the first 3D engines and multiplayer modes appeared with games such as Doom. This made it possible for players to compete against each other locally in LAN parties, for example - an early semi-professional form of electronic sport. In the early 2000s, the first professional players emerged and clans (associations of players) were formed. In addition, the first leagues such as the Electronic Sports League (ESL) were created. These are usually run by private companies and sometimes take the form of live events that fill the halls. In 2009, the global financial crisis led to the first drastic cut in the development of e-sports: prize money was drastically reduced, games were canceled and major sponsors bailed out. The industry was able to recover well from this review thanks to the emergence of live streaming platforms such as Twitch, as this makes it relatively easy to reach a wider audience. The most popular streamed e-sports games include “League of Legends”, “Dota 2”, “Counter-Strike” and the soccer simulation “FIFA”. In the spring of 2019, the CDU, CU and SPD included the promotion of the development of e-sports in the coalition agreement. However, little of this has been implemented to date.

Global revenue in the e-sports sector amounted to around 435 million euros in 2016. Just five years later, this figure was estimated at 1.4 billion euros - an average growth rate of around 27% per year. However, experts believe that this trend will not continue due to the coronavirus pandemic and ongoing inflation.