EPTHere's some moody electronic music to listen to while reading. Or listen to this. Or this.
![[image loading]](http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/3974/comeonguys.jpg)
eSports is born
June 1997: The Microsoft-sponsored Red Annihilation Quake tournament at the E3 expo is considered to be the first real esports competition of all time. Dennis 'Thresh' Fong wins the first prize: The Ferrari 328 GTS Cabriolet of Quake's lead developer John Carmack.
October 1997: The Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) hosts its very first event, called The FRAG. Prizes: Merchandise worth ~4000 $. The FRAG 2, which takes place one year later, already features a prize money of 15 000 $ in cash. At this point, the CPL isn't that special – there are various similar events.
April 2000: The Razer CPL Event changes that: It's a Quake 3 tournament with an overall prize pool of 100 000 $. Johnathan 'Fatal1ty' Wendel takes the first place, winning 40 000 $. Throughout the year, he claims a total of 102 000 $ in prize money. Yes, we're talking about the year 2000.
May 2000: Having moved to South Korea in order to pursue a pro-gaming career, the Canadian StarCraft player Guillaume 'Grrrr...' Patry wins the first OSL event that actually has Starleague in its name (the preceding Tooniverse Progamer Korea Open is widely considered to be the first OSL ever held; OnGameNet only starts broadcasting the season after Grrrr...'s victory). He is one of the first esports legionnaires and it's very likely that he will forever remain the only foreigner to win a major Korean competition in SC:BW. All this happens shortly after the government-approved Korean e-Sports Players Association (KeSPA) comes into operation and SC:BW starts to take off in South Korea.
May 2000: Turtle Entertainment is born. It serves as a parent company for the Electronic Sports League which thereby turns from a hobby into a business venture. The ESL (known as ESPL at first) has its roots in the DeCL (Deutsche Clanliga, means German clan-league) which started in 1997 – today, it's Europe's biggest esports league, having over 3 million registered users.
October 2000: The World Cyber Games Challenge takes place in Seoul; it features StarCraft: Brood War, Quake 3, Age of Empires II and FIFA 2000 as well as a prize pool of 200 000 $. Since day one, all WCG-related events are sponsored and co-organized by Samsung. Basically, WCG is Samsung.
May 2001: A fine gentleman named Lim 'BoxeR' Yo-hwan wins his first OnGameNet Starleague trophy. By that time, he is already widely regarded to be the most famous Korean pro-gamer. And yet it took some more years until he became a public figure and appeared in TV spots.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv3dqjgLeCg
OSL final: BoxeR vs. JinNam
OSL final: BoxeR vs. JinNam
December 2001: The first actual World Cyber Games have an overall prize money of 300 000 $. They involve 430 players from 37 nations in 6 disciplines: Counter-Strike, Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, Age of Empires II, FIFA 2001 – and, of course, StarCraft: Brood War, where BoxeR places first. He will repeat his success one year later.
December 2001: As the dot-come bubble bursts, most event organizers are forced to take a step back – the first esports recession, so to say – but the CPL continues to grow. The CPL World Championship 2001 has a 150 000 $ prize pool, primarily provided by Intel. The event's main title is Counter-Strike – the game that slowly out-competes Quake 3 in terms of popularity. From then on, there are two major CPL events each year: The CPL Summer Championship and the CPL Winter Championship, both taking place in Dallas, USA.
Professionalism!
March 2002: Major League Gaming sees the light of day. It entirely focuses on the US market and on console gaming at first, in particular the Halo series and Super Smash Bros. Melee.
July 2002: The first event of the Evolution Championship Series (short: EVO), the most important annual fighting game tournament, takes place in Las Vegas, USA. Winning gold in Marvel vs. Capcom 2: Justin 'JWong' Wong. Many other achievements followed; today, he is considered to be the most successful American fighting game player. Other than in the USA, fighting games are also very popular in Japan – Justin Wong's Japanese counterpart is Daigo Umehara.
August 2002: The ESL Pro Series launches in Germany. The first season of the online league with LAN finals has a prize money of ~80 000 $. The Berlin-based team mousesports, founded in March 2002 and sponsored by GeForce at that time, becomes the first EPS champion in Counter-Strike. The ESL Pro Series successfully positions itself as the premier league for esports on a national level and, over the course of time, shapes the German esports industry more than anything else – mainly because of the professionalism-enhancing rule set (transfer regulations, etc.), the huge audience numbers and the league's regular presence in German mainstream media.
February 2003: SK Gaming, founded as a German Quake team in 1997, is the first non-Korean organization to set up written contracts with the players of its Swedish Counter-Strike team. Some months later, the Norwegian star player Ola 'elemeNt' Moum joins SK, and the team becomes a dominant force in 2003, winning the CPL Summer, the CPL Winter and the World Cyber Games. Many people feel that the SK.swe lineup of that time made a significant contribution to the development of professional Counter-Strike – it forced other teams to practise very hard if they wanted to stay competitive.
![[image loading]](http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/8105/skswe.jpg)
Emil 'HeatoN' Christensen and his team mates dominate the CS world
March 2003: An important event for SC:BW in South Korea: The first ProLeague starts, hosted by OnGameNet. Companies like AMD, Samsung and Korean Telecom Freetel field own teams. Dongyang Orion, led by BoxeR, eventually comes out on top in season one. One year later, the largest telecommunications service provider in South Korea acquires Orion: SK Telecom T1 is born. Until today, no team has won the ProLeague more often than SKT T1.
August 2003: After being the main sponsor of mTw for a while, Alternate (Europe's biggest online shop for computer hardware and multimedia devices) presents its own corporate team: Alternate aTTaX, now Team Alternate, which becomes mousesports' main rival in the German ESL Pro Series. Soon thereafter, a team house is opened at the company's head quarters in Linden near Frankfurt. Players regularly visit it for LAN training sessions, nobody lives there permanently. By the way, Alternate aTTaX isn't the only corporate team at that time – probably, the most relevant one is Team64.AMD which closed down in the end of 2006.
July 2003: Another major SC:BW tournament pops up: the MBCGame StarCraft League (MSL), a successor to the KPGA Tour. Kang 'Nal_rA' Min wins the first season of the MSL over Lee 'NaDa' Yoon Yeol.
July 2003: The first Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC) takes place. It establishes itself as one of the most important events of the year, not least due to its competitive prize pools. The first edition features 156 000 $ split over five disciplines: Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike Female, WarCraft 3, Unreal Tournament 2003 and Quake 3. In the following years, the prize money gets more than doubled.
October 2003: The World Cyber Games feature WarCraft 3 for the first time. SK's Bulgarian player Zdravko 'Insomnia' Georgiev places first and wins 20 000 $. At that time, WarCraft 3 is becoming huge everywhere around the world. There are even televized tournaments in South Korea; Bertrand 'ElkY' Grospellier, one of the best foreign SC:BW players over there, switches to WC3 – and some not too successful Korean pro-gamers also do. In Korea, StarCraft remains much bigger than WarCraft, but in the rest of the world, it fades away.
January 2004: The Cyber X Games in Las Vegas, USA turn out to be a huge disaster. They are announced as a revolutionary tournament for CS, WC3, UT2003 and other games, with over 600 000 $ in prize money. However, the event is very poorly organized and network issues force the organisers to cancel the majority of the tournaments, including the Counter-Strike one. In the end, a big part of the prize money isn't distributed at all and many teams and players travelled all the way to Las Vegas for no reason.
May 2004: The first real transfer in the Western esports world takes place: Counter-Strike player Ola 'elemeNt' Moum gets transfered from SK Gaming to Team NoA, an undisclosed transfer fee is paid. NoA is the first trans-continental CS team on a professional level: Three members are from America, two from Norway.
October 2004: SK Gaming sends its Korean WC3 player Hwang 'Zacard' Tae-min to Germany in order to compete in the ESL Pro Series. A pro-gaming legionnaire, just the other way round. However, SK|Zacard only places 5th in his first EPS season, barely not qualifying for the finals, and returns to Korea.
October 2004: Meng 'RocketBoy' Yang wins 1 million ¥ (~120 000 $) by defeating Fatal1ty in an abit-sponsored Doom 3 shootout at the Great Wall of China. This is the highest prize anyone has ever received for winning one single esports match.
![[image loading]](http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9121/rocketboy.jpg)
RocketBoy with his cheque
December 2004: The CPL Winter 2004 is the event where compLexity gets introduced to the global scene. It's the first major event for the Counter-Strike team and, to the surprise of many people, it places 5th. coL's charismatic manager Jason '1' Lake draws a lot of attention to himself because of his enthusiastic, emotional appearance and his style of clothing. Seriously, for many people compLexity was simply "the team with the tie-wearing guy who always shouts like crazy" at first.
Reaching for the stars
January 2005: To exclude fake accounts from competitive online play, the Electronic Sports League introduces its user authentification system in Germany. Users who verify their data via postal mail and, as introduced later, a copy of their personal ID, become Trusted users and get a credit-card-sized ESL Playercard which offers benefits at ESL events. Being a Trusted user becomes a requirement for participation in the ESL Pro Series and its qualification league, the ESL Amateur Series. (In 2011, another method of authentification was developed in cooperation with Deutsche Post, the German postal service, which is currently one of ESL's sponsors.)
January 2005: The World e-Sports Games are announced. The WEG are a series of highly lucrative events for Counter-Strike and WarCraft 3. All matches take place in a TV studio, so the participants are required to live in China respectively South Korea for the duration of the season, i.e. approximately two months – accomodation and more is provided by WEG, there's an actual Players Village. In 2005, there are three seasons with overall prizes of ~700 000 $. Unsurprisingly, the WEG manage to attract many of the world's best teams and players. Furthermore, this is one of the first times that Western and Chinese participants compete with each other, many people are surprised by the quality of the Asians, in particular wNv Teamwork (CS) and Li 'Sky' Xiaofeng (WC3).
March 2005: The Intel-sponsored CPL World Tour, a ground-breaking global tournament series in the fast-paced shooter Painkiller, starts. It features a total prize money of 1 000 000 $, half of it being given out at the World Tour Finals. To qualify, you have to gather points at the 9 regular events (supposedly 10, the German stop is cancelled due to youth protection regulations), and the points also determine your final seeding. The result is that most of the ambitious players attend as many World Tour stops as they can, everywhere from Brazil to Singapore. Many of them do it full-time, they come together to practise on LAN for weeks.
March 2005: It is discovered that the MBCGame Prime League in WC3 used modified maps that favor the Orc race and weaken the Nightelf race. This scandal further contributes to WC3's unpopularity in South Korea. However, WC3 still flourishes in the rest of the world. The ESL's WC3L establishes itself as the premier team league and becomes very reputable.
April 2005: Ola 'elemeNt' Moum leaves Team NoA after winning the first season of the WEG due to personal differences with fellow countryman Jørgen 'XeqtR' Johannessen. He joins the team Made in Brazil (mibr) from – you guessed it – Brazil. As the NoA players didn't permanently live together, this can be considered to be the first Counter-Strike-related relocation in esports history. However, he only stays for a few months because mibr's management is dissatisfied with his frequent absence due to trips back to Norway. Half a year later, elemeNt becomes a legionnaire again: He moves to Germany to become part of the mousesports team. There, his contract is terminated after half a year due to communication problems and the related lack of satisfying results.
April 2005: Lim 'BoxeR' Yo-hwan signs a new three-year SKT T1 contract with an annual salary of ~180 000 $ plus up to ~80 000 $ in bonuses. This is the highest level of salary ever achieved in SC:BW. Yet, there are a few top players with an income that is comparable to BoxeR's – for instance, Lee 'NaDa' Yoon Yeol eventually earns ~200 000 $ a year in Pantech EX, now known as WeMade FOX.
June 2005: The ESL creates a separate league for players from Austria and Switzerland: The EPS Alps is born. There are several EPS throughout Europe – they are organized with the help of national licence partners. At different points in time, there are EPS Benelux (Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg), EPS Bulgaria, EPS Germany, EPS Spain, EPS France, EPS Greece, EPS Italy, EPS Poland, EPS Romania, EPS Denmark, EPS Scandinavia (later-on called EPS Nordic; Sweden, Norway, Denmark), EPS Ukraine and EPS UK.
November 2005: The World Cyber Games 2005 take place in Singapore; the overall prize money is 435 000 $ and there are over 800 players from 67 countries. This is the first and, as of today, only time that Counter-Strike's successor, Counter-Strike: Source, is used at the WCG. Many CS fans, especially the professional players, dislike CS:Source and the game fails to establish itself in the competitive scene. There are some less important events that feature CS:Source, but the major competitions still stick to the original Counter-Strike even today, or they include both games. Well, the top 3 of the WCG 2005 consists of teams that generally compete in CS and not in CS:S anyway. The first place goes to Team 3D from the USA – it's their second title after 2004. It's assumed that a CS player at 3D, managed by Craig 'Torbull' Levine, already receives an average monthly salary of approximately 800 $ at that time. Silver goes to the entirely unknown Kazakh team k23 whose players later stated that they sometimes couldn't even practise 5on5 but had to play team-internal 2on2 or 3on3 matches due to the lack of skilled opponents in Kazakhstan – this is possibly esports' prime Cinderella story. Bronze went to Evil Geniuses from Canada – yes, it used to be a Canada-focused organization; there were some US players, too, but EG wasn't on the same level as 3D and coL.
November 2005: Turtle Entertainment becomes a shareholder of the innovative multimedia- and youth-focused German TV channel GIGA. Its program is restructured to cover gaming and especially esports more frequently. Half a year later, the professional IPTV channel GIGA2 is launched. It entirely focuses on high-quality esports broadcasts in return for a subscribtion fee of 2-3 € a month, However, it has to close down one and a half years later because its losses were too high – the esports shows on GIGA also get cancelled and the TV channel gets sold to another company. There are esports-related TV show projects in other countries, too – in Sweden and in Russia, for example. None of them make a serious impact though, despite having a few creative ideas.
December 2005: The CPL World Tour Finals take place in New York City, USA. In the grand final, which is broadcasted live on MTV Overdrive, the two most important figures of the World Tour meet. On one side, there's the most prominent fast-paced shooter player in the world, Johnathan 'Fatal1ty' Wendel, and on the other, we have Sander 'Vo0' Kaasjager. The Dutch fnatic player was a relative noname until Painkiller came out, but managed to win 5 of the 9 World Tour stops and is considered the favorite to win. In the end, it's Fatal1ty who takes home the victory, earning 150 000 $, while fnatic|Vo0 receives 100 000 $ for the second place. In overall winnings, however, Vo0 outperforms Fatal1ty: He earned 223 000 $ throughout the season. His outstanding performance initiates the rise of fnatic – at that point, the 2004-founded organization is still young, but the popularity of Vo0 makes it possible to grow the business and attract many new sponsors. Standing on a good financial basis, fnatic then acquires a new Swedish CS team which eventually becomes the world's best.
![[image loading]](http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/7157/cplwtfinal.jpg)
fnatic|Vo0 vs. Fatal1ty
The golden era of esports commences
February 2006: Major League Gaming secures 10 million $ in venture capital funding. This allows for further expansion: MLG starts broadcasting their events on USA Network, and one year later, on Comcast's G4 – however, it turns out that TV presence is not as relevant for MLG's advertisers as assumed, and since then MLG focuses on internet broadcasts. Furthermore, the top performers of the league get directly contracted to and sponsored by MLG; it starts to act as a governing body for console gaming in the US. Its main event series, the MLG Pro Circuit, consists of 4-8 events throughout North America and one final event called National Championship – in 2006, the total prize money amounts to 800 000 $.
Febuary 2006: Jang 'Moon' Jae-ho, the most successful WC3 player of all times, joins MeetYourMakers. MYM, initially a Danish team, was one of the first organizations to bring Korean WarCraft 3 players to the international arena. Later, MYM started a cooperation with the Korean team Hanbitstars, forming MYM.Hanbit – and in the beginning of 2006, it entirely takes over the players. Other Western organizations also look around for Korean additions, and most WC3L teams soon mainly consist of Asian players – with the exception of Four Kings, who gain many fans thanks to Manuel 'Grubby' Schenkhuizen and Yoan 'ToD' Merlo.
February 2006: Intel doesn't continue its cooperation with the CPL, but sponsors a new venture, namely the World Series of Video Games (WSVG). It features Counter-Strike, WarCraft 3 and Quake 4 as its main disciplines. Its regular events take place in cooperation with other event organisers, for instance one WSVG stop is part of the DreamHack Summer 2006 – and this is basically the first time DreamHack becomes really relevant in terms of esports (and since then, its tournaments become bigger every year). The overall prize money given away by WSVG in 2006 amounts to 750 000 $.
May 2006: Instead of having multiple seasons like in 2005, there is only one WEG event in 2006: the World e-Sports Games Masters. In Counter-Strike, wNv Teamwork places first and wins 70 000 $. In WarCraft 3, Yoan 'ToD' Merlo places first and wins 30 000 $. Both are the highest payouts for winning a single tournament the history of these two games. The event series is continued under the name World e-Sports Masters (WEM).
May 2006: Verizon FiOS announces a Grand Tournament for the rather unpopular game Half-Life 2: Deathmatch. The top 8 players are taken to Hermosa Beach, CA, USA for a LAN to compete for the top prize – 100 000 $, won by Micah 'Micahwave' Ernst.
June 2006: Turtle Entertainment announces the first season of the Intel Extreme Masters, featuring CS and WC3. The IEM become the premier international competition of the Eletronic Sports League. The top teams and players of the ESL Pro Series qualify for the IEM where they are joined by the winners of qualification tournaments in countries without an EPS. As the IEM become bigger, Global Challenges and Continential Championships are added to the initial concept.
June 2006: The MLG announces the signing of their most successful Halo 2 team, Final Boss (formerly part of Team 3D), to a 1 000 000 $ contract, and also signs Tom 'Tsquared' Taylor, leader of the team Str8 Rippin, for another 250 000 $. Overall, MLG manages over 30 of its top players at this point. Thanks to MLG, console gaming actually plays a very relevant role for esports in North America while it's pretty underdeveloped in Europe and the rest of the world.
June 2006: In 2006, the Electronic Sports World Cup hosts its highlight event. The venue is the Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy and several thousands of enthusiastic spectators come to watch the best teams and players of the world. The prize money is at its peak, too: 400 000 $ are given away. Other than that, this is the event that marks the beginning of Alexey 'Cypher' Yanushevsky's career. The unknown 16-year-old Belarussian Quake 4 player surprisingly wins silver at his first international event, defeating players such as mousesports' Russian Quake master Anton 'Cooller' Singov. The second new-generation Quake star, one year younger Maciej 'av3k' Krzykowski from Poland, celebrates his first major achievement at the next year's ESWC: He takes home gold. And the ESWC 2008 is the first time that the US-American player Shane 'rapha' Hendrixson gets into the spotlight by placing third – today, he's a two-time IEM world champion.
![[image loading]](http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/8757/eswc2006.jpg)
Electronic Sports World Cup 2006
July 2006: Team Alternate's star Javid 'Kapio' Navadi, who is presumably the best German Counter-Strike player at that time, signs a pre-contract with mousesports, thereby violating his contract with Alternate that forbids him to sign any other contracts until it expires in the end of the year. As a result, he gets barred by Alternate and has to spend one full EPS season on the bench – for obvious reasons, the transfer negotiations between the two rivaling organizations don't yield any fruit. As initially planned, Kapio joins mouz in the beginning of 2007 and contributes to seven ESL Pro Series championships in a row.
August 2006: In Germany, there is a new print magazine called eGames which focuses on esports. However, it can't establish itself and gets discontinued in 2007. There are other attempts at bringing esports to the print world, most notably the ProGam3r Magazine in the US. Another way traditional publishing houses get involved in esports is by buying esports news sites: The German Computec Media AG acquires readmore.de in 2007; a Swedish newspaper eventually buys fragbite.se.
August 2006: A new German venture, the eSport-Bundesliga, broadcasts its mainstreamized FIFA league on the German TV channel DSF. The league exclusively signs its players to itself and bans them from participating in competing leagues such as the ESL Pro Series. The eSport-Bundesliga never gets accepted as part of "our" esports world and only survives for one season, then the company goes bankrupt. Its creators work on an inofficial successor which is featured on MTV as a part of the show MTV Game One, but it fails again.
October 2006: MLG secures another 25 million $ in funding and buys GameBattles, a popular website for amateur-level online competitions mostly in console games. It becomes MLG's counterpart to ESL's normal ladders and leagues that are immensely popular in Germany and other European countries. In the US, the most popular online leagues of that time are the Cyberathlete Amateur League (CAL, part of CPL), the CEVO and a new, ambitious venture called Global Gaming League. The GGL, which also acquired the old Europe-based league ClanBase, hosts events on a professional level as well – most notably its TransAtlantic Showdown 2006 with over 100 000 $ in prize money. However, GGL/ClanBase don't survive the financial crisis.
December 2006: The WSVG Grand Finals take place in New York City. Noone is surprised when SK's Johan 'toxjq' Quick wins the Quake 4 tournament, defeating Fatal1ty in the final. toxjq is the dominating player of the year, winning most major events and being considered the best Quake 4 player thoughout the game's entire esports lifespan of about two years. However, after the release of Quake Live (which is basically a free-to-play online version of Quake 3), he decides to quit professional gaming.
January 2007: The Championship Gaming Series by DirecTV starts – and brings esports to the TV. It's a global league with over 1 000 000 $ in prize money, and it's completely exclusive: If you sign one of CGS' lucrative contracts, you aren't allowed to participate in any other tournaments. The selected games are rather controversial: CS:Source, Dead or Alive 4, FIFA 07 and Project Gotham Racing 3 are played. The two premier North American teams, Team 3D and compLexity, become exclusive CGS franchise teams (being renamed to New York 3D and Los Angeles Complexity). Most esports fans are uninterested in the CGS due to its disciplines, the mainstream-focused broadcasts and the cheesy, unauthentic presentation (e.g. paid fans, models in referee shirts, draft event at the Playboy Mansion). And obviously "stealing" some of the best players and organizations didn't contribute to CGS' popularity either.
January 2007: The Koreans Zacard and Sweet leave SK Gaming to join the newly-created Chinese organization Beijing eSports Team (BeT). After Li 'Sky' Xiaofeng won the WCG in 2005 and in 2006, WC3 is becoming more and more popular in China. There are several new events that take place there and attract players from everywhere around the world, and at a later point even the WC3L hosts its finals in China instead of in Germany. Sky is part of Team WE aka World Elite, together with players like Wang 'Infi' Xuwen and Zhuo 'TeD' Zeng. The Koreans Lee 'SoJu' Sung Duk, Kim 'ReMinD' Sung Sik and Park 'Lyn' June also play for WE, but they get signed by SK Gaming half a year later – WE continues to do well with a purely Chinese lineup.
May 2007: The first fanbus in the history of the German ESL Pro Series drives from Alternate's corporate head quarters to Stuttgart, where one of the regular LAN events of the ESL Pro Series takes place. These events, called Intel Friday Night Games, usually present one league match per discipline played on stage in front of 500-1500 live spectators. At that time, there are about 10 IFNGs every season (until today, the amount was reduced by half). Three months later, TBH eSports organizes the first open-for-all fanbus from Munich to Stuttgart. Yes, there are actual fans.
![[image loading]](http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/5015/hooraionstage.jpg)
hoorai at one of the better visited IFNGs (still only one match in CS, CS:S, WC3 and FIFA)
September 2007: The World Series of Video Games gives up after half of the announced 2007 stops. Its first season was alright, but for its second season, Counter-Strike and WarCraft 3 were removed. Other than Quake 4, the WSVG used Guitar Hero 2, Fight Night 3 and World of WarCraft – trying to get more into the mainstream, without any success.
November 2007: After winning the WC3L four times, the WC3 team of the British organization Four Kings disbands due to financial problems, and since then, 4K couldn't live up to its previous achievements despite changing owners. ToD joins mousesports while Grubby signs with MeetYourMakers, who thereby complete their self-claimed 'Dreamteam'. The third top performer of 4K, Olav 'Creolophus' Undheim from Norway, already ended his (rather short) esports career some months earlier – at his last event, the WCG 2007, he showed an amazing performance and took home gold, but nonetheless sticked to his quitting plans. At this point in time, WC3 is at its peak. The top players earn monthly salaries in the four-digit area; allegedly, MYM pays a monthly salary of over 7000 $ to Jang 'Moon' Jae-ho. In the entire WC3L, which consists of 12 teams, basically all regular players receive at least a few hundred $ a month.
December 2007: Team NoA merges with, or rather becomes part of mTw. At that time, NoA features a strong Danish Counter-Strike team, and mTw.dk turns out to be one of the world's most successful Counter-Strike teams until today. NoA's WC3 team left the organization some months earlier, then gets contracted by fnatic. Notable player: Park 'Space' Sueng Hyun, who plays WC3 on the highest possible level despite having a rare inveterate muscle disorder which significantly lowers his life expectancy.
Brought back down to earth
May 2008: The G7 Teams are an association of the most successful organizations of the world, created in the year 2006 (consisting of SK, fnatic, mouz, MYM, wNv and a few others). They aim to improve the coordination between teams, event organisers and the community and to jointly impose sanctions on events that fail to pay out prize money – such as the CPL which is being boycotted. In May 2008, the G7 Teams publish a set of standard contracts for esports players. They commit to supporting teams with contract-related issues if they use said contracts. At this point, contracts are already the industry standard. All professional teams make use of them and it is generally recognized that they are indeed legally binding. It's reasonable to estimate that there are over 200 players with professional contracts at this time only in Germany.
May 2008: The Cyberathlete Professional League officially goes out of business after it already lost all its relevance more than one year ago – mainly because the CPL has had a history of not paying out prize money. Later-on, the founder Angel Munoz sells the brand to allegedly Arabic investors, but eventually it is revealed that the new, Asia-oriented CPL endeavors are in fact run by the same people who were responsible for CPL World Tour, WSVG and CGS.
August 2008: The International eSport Federation is founded as a parent organization for all national esports associations. The founding members are Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam. According to ie-sf.com, today's members are China, Taiwan, India, Malaysia, Maldives, South Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil.
August 2008: For the first time in its history, the ESWC doesn't take place in France, but in San Josè, USA, near the corporate head quarters of main sponsor Nvidia – in terms of spectator attendance, it flops. The event features Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike Female, WarCraft 3, Quake 3, TrackMania Nations ESWC (a special edition of the racing game specifically created for the tournament) as well as the WC3 mod Defense of the Ancients (DotA) – it's the first major event to host a tournament for the increasingly popular game. It's the first one of its kind; today, games like DotA, LoL and HoN are usually classified as Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA). This is the time when DotA becomes present in esports and successful organizations like SK Gaming, MeetYourMakers and mousesports field own teams, even though they are usually haunted by lineup instability and other problems. DotA is especially popular in China, South East Asia and Eastern Europe.
September 2008: Over the course of time, it becomes evident that the WC3 players' earnings were blown out of proportion – to a large extent, due to MeetYourMakers' high salaries. Since a while, organizations struggle at making their WC3 teams sustainable (Four Kings was only one example), and the problem gets out of hand when the effects of the financial crisis kick in. In September 2008, SK Gaming removes the biggest part of its WC3 team and leaves all team leagues. mousesports did just the same thing a few months earlier, but then eventually returns with a less expensive, mainly Chinese lineup. Other teams also change their approach. This forces the WC3L to adjust its league system so that it only requires three players instead of five.
![[image loading]](http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/9863/4kings.jpg)
The legendary 4Kings team
November 2008: The World Cyber Games take place in Cologne, Germany. So far, it's the biggest WCG event in terms of participants: There are 78 participating countries, 850 gamers, 13 disciplines. Overall, 408 000 $ in prize money are given away. That's 54 000 $ less than in 2006 when WCG hit its prize money peak – for comparison: WCG 2010 only featured 167 000 $, which is even less than the WCG Challenge in the year 2000. Not only the prize money decreases significantly after 2008, Samsung also shrinks down its sponsorship for national qualifier organisers which leads to less participating countries (in 2010, there are 57).
November 2008: After two seasons, the Championship Gaming Series gets cancelled. Many people agree that this could have been expected, but nonetheless the CGS had a strong influence especially on esports in North America. While the European CS teams didn't switch to CS:Source nor paid much attention to the small-scale European CGS competition, the US championship managed to attract most of the American players – simply due to the lack of alternatives. The exclusive, draft-based system damaged non-CGS organizations. Some teams, however, used the new environment to their advantage, most notably Evil Geniuses who become the premier American organization outside of CGS. Anyway, when the CGS closes down, things look rather bad for PC esports in the US.
December 2008: Jason '1' Lake decides to rebuild compLexity. He intends to continue working with his CS players (who switched back from CS:Source after CGS) – after all, they partially played for coL since its beginnings in 2004. However, the team accepts an offer from Evil Geniuses instead of waiting until coL attracts new sponsors. Some months later, the Finnish player Tomi 'lurppis' Kovanen moves to the USA in order to play for EG – and this gives a significant boost to the team's performance. He stays with EG for almost two years, then returns to his home country. As for Jason Lake, he doesn't give up on his plans despite this heavy setback, contracts other teams and brings two other reputable esports personalities on board as managers and co-owners: Jason 'Anomoly' Bass and Alex 'Jax' Conroy (who eventually leaves again).
January 2009: ESNation A/S, the company behind MeetYourMakers (and some other esports projects), files for bankruptcy. ESNation has always tried to become the best and grow its business in a very aggressive fashion, relying on millions of $ in venture capital, paying the highest salaries, and so on. Eventually, their approach backfires and the company is unable to survive. MYM's WC3 stars move on: Grubby gets transfered to Evil Geniuses, which thereby once and for all establishes itself as one of the world's leading organizations; Moon joins WeMade FOX. MYM's successful Polish CS team (which was signed in the end of 2007, being known as PGS Gaming/Team Pentagram before) needs a few attempts to find the right partner, but eventually joins the Polish organization Frag eXecutors – not before winning the WCG 2009 under the provisory name AGAiN. Half a year later, the MYM brand and the website gets sold to a German company and the organization is reopened under a new management – this time, without exorbitant player salaries.
March 2009: The company behind the ESWC ceases its operations. It was unable to secure enough funding for another season after the event's latest main sponsor, Nvidia, didn't continue supporting the ESWC due to the financial crisis. Later-on, the ESWC brand gets bought by another French company and the tournament comes back to life in 2010.
March 2009: A young man runs amok in the small village Winnenden near Stuttgart, Germany – 16 people die. As the spree killer used to play games such as Counter-Strike, there is a political debate whether violent video games should be banned. The following IFNGs in Stuttgart and Karlsruhe get cancelled by the respective city administrations despite Turtle Entertainment's active participation in debates about Counter-Strike and concentrated lobbying efforts. Due to this, esports plays an actual role in public discussions, and on a few occassions esports personalities even get invited into TV talk shows. Gamer-organized demonstrations take place. At a later point, Turtle Entertainment co-organizes an educational LAN party at the German parliament, the Bundestag.
December 2009: The Ukrainian Counter-Strike team Natus Vincere sees the light of day. Until the WCG 2007, where A-Gaming from Ukraine unexpectedly places third, people don't even consider Ukraine to be competitive in CS, but over the course of time, the internet connections get better and Ukrainians start to show good results. Na`Vi wins all major events in 2010: IEM World Championship, Electronic Sports World Cup, World Cyber Games. It becomes the team to beat. Na`Vi has its own team flat, too – this is actually not a rarity for professional CS teams in Eastern Europe. Of course, top teams in other parts of the world also get together to practise at the same physical location regularly.
![[image loading]](http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/3227/navipolitics.jpg)
The recent past
May 2010: The Korean match fixing scandal is revealed. 11 SC:BW pro-gamers, including Ma 'sAviOr' Jae Yoon and Park 'Luxury' Chan Soo are found guilty of losing matches on purpose and being involved in betting fraud. Four of the players are sentenced to probation, the others receive financial penalties. All are banned from pro-gaming by KeSPA.
June 2010 Evil Geniuses signs the top fighting game players Justin 'JWong' Wong, Martin 'MaRN' Pham and Ricky Ortiz, becoming the first CS-grown organization to get involved in Super Street Fighter IV and other popular titles. Exactly one year later, compLexity opens a fighting game division with players such as Ryan 'gootecks' Gutierrez. Shortly afterwards, EG adds the first Japanese players to its roster.
July 2010: After the previous half-hearted attempts to conquer the USA failed, Turtle Entertainment launches the National ESL with the help of experienced people like Trevor 'Midway' Schmidt. Other than hosting the qualifications for the Intel Extreme Masters and other global ESL events, it also features normal league play. This is the second continent the ESL expands to after it already acquired the Chinese company ProGamer League (PGL) to establish itself on the Asian market in 2007.
July 2010: Shortly after StarCraft 2 is released, the first esports competitions for the long-awaited new Blizzard game pop up. It replaces WarCraft 3 and StarCraft: Brood War basically everywhere and most top players make the switch (some with more success than others) – WC3 only stays alive in China, and of course SC:BW does in South Korea. Soon, Major League Gaming announces that it also adds SC2 to its Pro Circuit – the second time a PC title is played at MLG after World of WarCraft was featured in 2008. Yet, MLG doesn't carry over its governing body and league exclusivity intentions – instead, they sponsor certain players such as Dario 'TLO' Wünsch and Tyler 'Tyler' Wasielewski who are still allowed to represent their teams.
July 2010: Transfer scandal between fnatic and SK Gaming: It is announced that Rasmus 'Gux' Ståhl returns to fnatic's CS team after playing for SK since February. However, SK's management regards Gux as a contracted player even though he delayed sending them a written contract – they present chat logs that prove that Gux claimed to have sent it already. The two organizations can't come to an agreement and blame each other for making the details of their conflict public – this marks the beginning of their ongoing hostile rivalry. And this marks the end of the G7 Teams as the two driving forces behind it, SK's Alexander 'TheSlaSH' Müller and fnatic's Sam 'zr0' Mathews, refuse to cooperate with each other any longer.
July 2010: Sadly, this tragic event is part of esports history as well: 20-year-old Antonio 'cyx' Daniloski, CS player for mousesports, dies in a car accident while travelling to the IEM Global Challenge in Shanghai, China.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GykS0d_wl2Y
Rest in peace, mouz|cyx.
Rest in peace, mouz|cyx.
August 2010: GOM TV announces the Global StarCraft II League (GSL) – the biggest event series in SC2 so far. All GSL matches are played in a TV studio in Seoul, South Korea and the prize money amounts to over 500 000 $ only in 2010. Kim 'FruitDealer' Won Ki (formerly known as Cool) receives 100 000 000 KRW (~85 000 $) for winning the first GSL – Lim 'NesTea' Jae Duk (formerly known as ZergBong) and Jang 'MC' Min Chul (formerly known as IrOn) get the same amount of money for winning the other two open seasons. In 2011, a league system that consists of Code S and Code A is established. The prize money for the Code S winner is only half of what a 2010 champion receives, but there is the Super Tournament which features 100 000 000 KRW.
August 2010: Team Liquid announces a cooperation with Old Generations (oGs) – most of the team's players move to the oGs team house in South Korea to practise and participate in the GSL. Jonathan 'Jinro' Walsh has the most success, he places in the GSL top 4 twice. However, most other players don't do nearly as well and eventually return home. Some start a new team house in Sweden.
December 2010: The FIFA twins Daniel 'hero' Schellhase and Dennis 'styla' Schellhase end their esports careers. The two Germans have been extremely successful in the FIFA series: Both of them won the World Cyber Games twice (in addition, they won the 2on2 competition of the WCG 2003 as a team). They also won several ESL Pro Series championships – placing first in the solo leagues as well as in the team leagues together with their team SK Gaming, where they played since the end of 2004. They were featured on German TV several times and appeared in advertising campaigns for companies such as adidas.
December 2010: SK signs two of fnatic's core CS players, Patrik 'f0rest' Lindberg and Christopher 'GeT_RiGhT' Alesund. The two wanted to change their team's lineup, removing two long-time players – but fnatic's management disagreed. Therefore, they join SK Gaming instead, and SK's new lineup does not only look extremely good on paper, but also shows excellent results. fnatic builds a new team with players such as Marcus 'Delpan' Larsson.
February 2011: The North American Star League (NASL), a huge global SC2 tournament, starts – the main season is played online and the top 16 get invited to the LAN finals which take place in California, USA. 100 000 $ are distributed among the top performers.
May 2011: The SK-fnatic rivalry continues: SK Gaming announces that Delpan joins its CS team even though he still has a contract with fnatic. It is only until after his official presentation as a new player that SK starts engaging in negotiations and eventually agrees on a transfer fee with fnatic whose management is anything but pleased with SK's approach.
June 2011: fnatic signs the Korean SC2 player Park 'Rain' Seo Yong and he moves to fnatic's team house in the USA. This is the first time that a Korean pro-gamer prefers a Western SC2 team over a domestic one. He won't be the last one, as Evil Geniuses takes in Lee 'PuMa' Ho Joon after he wins the NASL. However, another approach also becomes popular: Cooperations in which Korean players represent Western organizations at events outside of South Korea while remaining part of their domestic teams in Korean tournaments. SK Gaming does this with oGs' MC and NaDa, compLexity with players from MVP. At the same time, the Australian organization FXOpen acquires the Korean team fOu.
July 2011 Turtle Entertainment presents its new format for the Intel Extreme Masters: Instead of a regular online season in Europe and North America and subsequent Continental Championships in Europe, America and Asia/Oceania, there are only Global Challenges – five of them – and a final event. This indicates that the ESL moves away from its initial concept – after all, the ESL Pro Series don't have nearly as much relevance in SC2 as they used to have in CS and WC3. Most of the national licence partners have quit and only EPS Germany, EPS France, EPS Spain and EPS Poland remain. Furthermore, IEM drops Quake Live – which is a huge hit for the game's competive scene as it only has very few events such as QuakeCon and DreamHack left. Quake's time as one of the main esports titles is over.
July 2011: The esports-focused Korean TV station MBCGame is said to shut down. This would also mean the end of the MBCGame StarCraft League (and most likely the end of the SC:BW team MBCGame HERO).
August 2011: Two events mark the esports breakthrough of MOBA games: Firstly, the popular free-to-play game League of Legends is added to the Intel Extreme Masters. Secondly, Valve announces a tournament for its to-be-released game DotA2: At the gamescom in Cologne, 16 invited DotA top teams compete in DotA2 for the very first time – the winners receive 1 000 000 $.
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Hot_Bid/GSL/FullAud.jpg)
Audience at the finals of the first GSL Open
My motivation to write this shit:
+ Show Spoiler +
Many of us "oldschool" people just ignore all the weird comments and jokingly ask ourselves what we were doing all the time if esports only exists since 2010. But maybe it's our fault?! After all, the Western CS-, WC3- and Quake-centered esports world never really bothered to get involved in SC:BW which eventually lead to separated communities. Anyway, I hope this shows that the Western scene has its own established structures and all in all, they work rather well. Of course, our organizations can learn from the Koreans, especially in terms of training efficiency, but there is no need to adapt everything they do. And not everything that is presented as "revolutionary" is in fact revolutionary, there's already been a lot of crazy stuff – not saying that there's anything wrong with having the same crazy stuff again in SC2, just be aware of past attempts.
It should be entirely irrelevant who I am, but apparently some people here consider a poster's reputation to be really important (only read if you're one of them):
+ Show Spoiler +
It should be entirely irrelevant who I am, but apparently some people here consider a poster's reputation to be really important (only read if you're one of them):
+ Show Spoiler +
Lari 'D.Devil' Syrota. I'm involved in esports since over half a decade – not particularly specialized in one game, but closely following the industry as a whole. In 2006, I co-founded the German team hoorai and eventually worked as its head manager for three consecutive years. hoorai was quite successful back then, being one of the not-too-many organizations that worked with a six-digit yearly sponsorship budget during the previous golden era of esports. One of our former players you guys probably know is Johan 'NaNiwa' Lucchesi, who competed in WC3 for us. (Sadly, hoorai doesn't exist anymore: It closed down in 2010 due to sponsorship-related issues, one year after I quit.)
Anyway, since I left hoorai, I started an esports marketing agency that helps companies to properly advertise their brands to competitive gamers. Right now, I'm also working on a site called The Rocketjumper, which is supposed to become a hub for people who work in esports, focusing on where the industry is heading and what is happening behind the curtains. Unfortunately, I'm really busy with other stuff atm, but I hope to get it online in the next months. It's going to be great. Hopefully.
Oh, and I also play SC2 once in a while: EU Diamond League in 1on1, EU Master League in 2on2. (It's my first real RTS, I came all the way from Bronze... fuck yeah!)
My Twitter: @larisyrota
Anyway, since I left hoorai, I started an esports marketing agency that helps companies to properly advertise their brands to competitive gamers. Right now, I'm also working on a site called The Rocketjumper, which is supposed to become a hub for people who work in esports, focusing on where the industry is heading and what is happening behind the curtains. Unfortunately, I'm really busy with other stuff atm, but I hope to get it online in the next months. It's going to be great. Hopefully.
Oh, and I also play SC2 once in a while: EU Diamond League in 1on1, EU Master League in 2on2. (It's my first real RTS, I came all the way from Bronze... fuck yeah!)
My Twitter: @larisyrota
Did you actually read all of this? If you did: Thank you.
but then noticed what you were the same person who wrote the OP...LOL!
