It’s generally acknowledged that the first video game tournament took place at Stanford in 1972 with players skirmishing over the game Spacewar. An artificial intelligence lab there was one of the only places that could handle the hardware needs, and the winner got a subscription to Rolling Stone and bragging rights.
Fast forward four and a half decades or so, and the esports industry is expected to surge to more than 145 million participants and viewers by 2017 and the total number of consumers worldwide that are aware of esports will surpass 1 billion people this year, according to Newzoo research.
If you watch esports or participate, expect to see Comcast’s name and its Xfinity brand popping up everywhere since the operator announced today official Xfinity brand sponsorships with ESL and esports organization Evil Geniuses. Comcast’s will outfit EG’s training facilities with Gigabit Pro Internet service and X1 video services, and will have branding opportunities at industry broadcasts, tournaments and events.
“We’ve come a long way from playing on spare CRT monitors,” Clinton Loomis, player for Evil Geniuses’ Dota team, observes. “I started playing on dial up, so as far as sponsor perks go, having Xfinity multi-gigabit Internet speeds at our gaming house seems pretty surreal. I’m looking forward to using it and seeing what the buzz is all about.”
Obviously, long gone are the days that gamers had to head to a major university’s lab to do battle.
“Broadband and video innovations have made esports more popular and more accessible than ever. We’ll work closely with ESL and Evil Geniuses to put fans even closer to the action through our Xfinity products and services,” Todd Arata, VP of brand marketing at Comcast.
As an official ESL partner, Xfinity naming and branding will be integrated in Thursday’s Halo Championship Series: Pro League Season 1 and this weekend’s Heroes of the Storm Live Finals in Los Angeles. EG training facilities in Alameda, Calif., and Bloomington, Ill., will be installed with Xfinity products and branding will also appear on team jerseys, social channels, during live streams and across all player appearances.
