Remember When People Were Laughing at eSports?

When I was younger, I played a lot of video games. I only really played sports games, such as, Madden, NBA Live, Tiger Woods Golf and NCAA Football.

I would play the latest and greatest shooting game here and there, but sports games is where I spent majority of my video game time. I grew up before the internet was everywhere, so I didn’t start playing online until around my senior year of high school.

At that time, I played a lot of Madden. Something a lot of people may not know is that at one point, I was ranked in the Top 100 of online Madden Players in the world. I played a lot of Madden…A LOT!

There were not many ways to make money off of video games back then. Maybe a few bets here and there with friends, but nothing online.

Fast forward another 10 years and eSports started to become a thing, but people were still laughing at it. People were saying it’s just a dream, it’s not sustainable, it’s just an excuse to want to play video games.

Told My Wife it’s Time to Quit

I can remember sitting down and explaining to my wife why I need to quit my job and just start playing video games full-time online and how I could make so much more money than I could running a business.

She laughed at me.

Let’s look at life earlier this year.

eSports were now on TV. People are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year playing video games online and at in-person competitions and events.

Now, let’s look at life during the COVID-19 pandemic.

eSports are the ONLY thing that we have.

iRacing from NASCAR is huge.

The NBA is running a players tournament that is being played on ESPN.

People are watching others play video games for hours. You can even watch eLeague sports on TNT and TBS in primetime.

People are streaming Madden simulated games (and also betting on them).

Just go check out Twitch and you will see what I’m talking about.

eSports are not a joke. It is not going anywhere. In fact, it is only going to grow from this.