Pro gaming is the future of sports. We're starting to see little hints at it now, but believe me, this genre will be huge -- just ask Asia and Europe. The latest step in this growing field is the announcement today by the Championship Gaming Series to provide a $5 million annual payroll for its professional gamers. Check out the press release info:
Los Angeles, CA – The Championship Gaming SeriesTM (CGS), the first global professional gaming league, today announced that worldwide salaries and bonuses for the 2007 season will exceed $5 million, a new benchmark for professional gaming.
CGS has also announced the official games and schedule in its North American region for 2007. Qualifying for North American league play will begin April 28 and the first draft in history will take place on June 12 at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.
“This is the moment the gaming world has been waiting for,” said CGS Commissioner Andy Reif. “We will be paying salaries and bonuses to our players in excess of $5 million dollars during the 2007 season. The time has come for a new era of professional gaming as sports entertainment. Your chance to be a part of history starts on April 28.”
Championship Gaming Series Announces $5 Million Annual Player Payroll
- Counter-Strike®: Source® , Dead or Alive® 4, Project Gotham Racing® 3, and FIFA 2007 Named as Official Games
- First Draft in Gaming History will take place June 12 at the Playboy Mansion
Los Angeles, CA – The Championship Gaming SeriesTM (CGS), the first global professional gaming league, today announced that worldwide salaries and bonuses for the 2007 season will exceed $5 million, a new benchmark for professional gaming.
CGS has also announced the official games and schedule in its North American region for 2007. Qualifying for North American league play will begin April 28 and the first draft in history will take place on June 12 at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.
“This is the moment the gaming world has been waiting for,” said CGS Commissioner Andy Reif. “We will be paying salaries and bonuses to our players in excess of $5 million dollars during the 2007 season. The time has come for a new era of professional gaming as sports entertainment. Your chance to be a part of history starts on April 28.”
Valve’s Counter-Strike®: Source® and EA’s FIFA 2007 will be official PC games for 2007. For the Xbox 360, CGS will feature Tecmo’s Dead or Alive® 4 (DOA4) and Project Gotham Racing® 3 (PGR3) from Microsoft Game Studios.
The official CGS 2007 event schedule will feature online and live qualifiers where players will battle to reach the Regional Combine, scheduled to take place at the legendary Fox Studios in Los Angeles from June 8-10.
Players from the Regional Combine will then be drafted onto one of six city-based teams at the 2007 CGS Draft on June 12 at the Playboy Mansion. CGS online qualifiers for the North American region begin on April 28, 2007 with the first live qualifier to be held at The Bridge Cinema de Lux in Los Angeles on May 11-12.
Each CGS team will feature a total of ten athletes per team, each of whom is a specialist in one of the official league games. Five of the ten players will comprise a Counter-Strike: Source squad who will compete in five-on-five matches. The soccer title FIFA 07 will be played one-on-one. Each team will have a mixed-double team of two DOA4 players, one man and one woman, who will play against other teams in one-on-one matches on Xbox 360. The racing game PGR3 will be represented by two players on each team and matches will be played in a two-versus-two format.
Soon-to-be announced dates for the full global slate of 2007 CGS events in the UK, Europe, Asia, Australia, Latin America, and the Middle East will yield regional representatives for the CGS Grand Slam and World Championships, to be held in Los Angeles this October.
CGS events will be broadcast in North America on DIRECTV’s The 101. For more information, please go to www.thecgs.com.
About the Championship Gaming Series
Headquartered in Los Angeles, CA, the Championship Gaming SeriesTM (CGS) is the first international professional video gaming league. Launching in 2007, CGS features teams of the world’s best gamers from North America, Latin America, the United Kingdom, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. The league will distribute entertainment content to more than 100,000,000 households worldwide via DIRECTV in North America and Latin America, BSkyB in the UK, and STAR in Asia and Australia. CGS Founding Partners include Mountain Dew, Xbox 360, and IGN Entertainment.
Contest:
11:58 AM on 04.26.2007
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Finally my double jointed thumbs will come in handy!!
I swear if it ends up like the NFL where you can get paid millions to sit on your ass then I am so in lol.
I mean really anything of 30k will work for me :P.
are you serious? I think you are serious. That is just a ridiculous statement. sports may become more game-like, but will never be replaced with giant video screens and someone at a joystick.
I don't expect it to replace professional sports I do see it taking a seat right next to them.
fata1ity got fatalitied?
Sorry, but no. The problem is that to have a successful pro sport, you have to have *fans*. That's what pro gaming is missing from the equation.
Tons of people play games, sure. Just like tons of kids play soccer. But when they grow up, that doesn't mean they will be interested in or support professional soccer...and with gaming, the interest is far, far less. Pro gaming could survive to some extent, but it will not be any more popular than, say, professional arm wrestling.
I don't know that you can say that. Having an upstart professional league that hasn't even begun competition doesn't mean lasting success. Something like arm wrestling has been around professionally for decades and can even be seen on ESPN from time to time. And that's a sport that's about as low-profile as you can imagine. Pro gaming isn't even to that level, at least not in the U.S.
A lot of folks have mentioned that pro gaming has had some success in parts of Asia or Europe (and I'd love to hear some actual facts on that)...that doesn't necessarily indicate that it will take over the world and certainly not the U.S. Again, look at soccer...far and away the world's biggest sport, and in the States it usually doesn't even warrant a mention on SportsCenter.
Again, I'm not denying that pro gaming will continue to exist, just the outlandish statement that it is "the future of sports". Niche sport, like arm wrestling, sure. But saying it's the future of sports is akin to implying it will be somewhere near as big as the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, Nascar, etc. and that's just impossible. No matter how many people love to play games, you're not going to get that many people who want to watch other people play them.
Even gamers think watching other gamers game is boring. Now what if you went to a virtual "sporting event" where everyone in the stadium could participate in the virtual game, with 3D or some other kind of completely immersive tech. I think that might come close. Like someone else mentioned, it may one day become popular ALONGSIDE sports, but will never REPLACE sports. Also, sport might be affected by games as people get bored with current rules and tech evolves to allow lo-grav soccer or something.
Article about South Korean Pro Gaming.
Now they may be more techie in SK, but the point is that if it can happen there, it's only a matter of time. I don't disagree that sports will ever go away, but this is something that could become as big if not bigger, and I think that was the point of the statement (Summa's that is) too.
Thanks for the article...that's just freaking crazy. I still do have to disagree that it will inevitably happen here because it has succeeded elsewhere. There are many, many examples of huge successes of all sorts in other countries that haven't worked here.
Let's put it this way. I'm a HUGE fan of MMA (aka "ultimate fighting") and have been for years. To see the amount of effort and dedication it has taken to get the sport on TV, to make it even somewhat successful, to get even a mention on ESPN, etc. is eye-opening. And even with the amount of popularity the sport has gained, it still isn't a fraction as popular as any of the major professional sports in the U.S., even Nascar or PGA golf. Plus, some competitions/sports, like lacrosse, may be fun to play but that doesn't necessarily translate to being a good spectator sport. I think pro gaming is in that category, and many of the comments in this thread suggest similar opinions. Vinnchan (or Summa, for that matter), just out of curiosity: would YOU watch pro gaming leagues or follow the competitions on a regular basis? I honestly wouldn't. I've watched videos of people doing crazy things on youtube, etc. before, but as for rooting for a pro gaming team, having a favorite player, watching the matches? No way.
I think the best thing pro gaming could do is follow tournament-style formats where player's earnings are largely coming from other player's entry fees, or from event sponsors. I just don't see how pro gaming would have any kind of real revenue from fan support.
Hell, even in the US people are starting to make money, you can see professional organizations like MGL with million dollar contracts for their Halo players.
Play Hard Go Pro :D