The History of Esports: From Basement Tournaments to Million-Dollar Prizes

Esports is booming now, but can you believe that the roots of pro gaming go back more than half a century? Long before the best gamers in the world were battling it out for millions of dollars in prize money, pioneers laid the groundwork, competing at university campuses and other small-scale venues for magazine subscriptions on machines less powerful than your smartphone. Fancy that! 

These early gamers sparked a revolution that shows no signs of slowing down. 

The 1950s:  Gaming’s Humble Beginnings

Just a few years post-WWII, programmers were already coding the first video games. In 1952, British computer scientist Alexander Douglas created OXO, a simple "Noughts and Crosses" game running on an EDSAC at Cambridge University. Fast forward to 1958, and “Tennis for Two” introduced multiplayer gaming, allowing two people to smack a virtual ball over a net. They had no idea this would eventually morph into an industry worth billions.

The 1960s: Enter Space War! 

Though the first official Esports tournament was still a decade away, the 1960s delivered a number of key milestones. Program developers started experimenting with the concept of virtual scoreboards and themed games. However, the most significant achievement of the decade was the release of the game Spacewar!, a spaceship combat game created by MIT’s Steve Russell in 1962. With limited fuel, ammo, and a star’s gravity to dodge, it was light-years ahead of its time. Simple by today's standards, but Spacewar! laid the foundation for Esports and even snagged an award… 40 years later.

The 1970s: The First Esports Events 

In 1972, history was made when the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Stanford University hosted the world's first official Esports event, the Intergalactic Spacewar! Olympics. Students were invited to play Spacewar! competitively for the chance to win a year's subscription to Rolling Stone magazine. Out of twenty four players, Bruce Baumgart took the individual crown, and team champs Tovar and Robert E. Maas made history in the process.

The next few years would see vast improvements in gaming technology and a growing interest in gaming tournaments. The Magnavox Odyssey became the first gaming console to connect with a TV and arcade consoles also started to become widely available. Classic games like Pong and Asteroids were heating up arcades, and high-score contests became the go-to way to compete. 

In Japan, Sega’s All Japan TV Game Championships in 1974 drew thousands of players, raising the bar for Esports with cutting-edge prizes like color TVs and tape recorders.

By the decade’s end, Atari had gone international with its football tournaments, but their biggest legacy came in 1978 with the release of Space Invaders, which would kickstart a gaming craze. 

The 1980s: 10,000 Strong at the Space Invaders Championship

By 1980, Atari elevated the gaming scene with the Space Invaders Championship, attracting over 10,000 players vying for the ultimate bragging rights. Among them was 16-year-old William Salvador Heineman (now Rebecca Heineman), who emerged victorious, becoming the first-ever National Esports Champion. Her win catapulted her into the gaming spotlight, leading to a writing role at Electronic Games magazine, followed by a successful career as a programmer and gaming entrepreneur. Heineman’s journey cemented her status as a key figure in the industry.

The 1980s continued to be a transformative period for gaming. Walter Day, an arcade owner, created Twin Galaxies, the first organization to officially track video game high scores. His efforts secured gaming’s place in the Guinness World Records and led to the creation of the U.S. National Video Game Team in 1983. Twin Galaxies didn’t just record achievements—they played a central role in organizing competitions, including the Video Game Masters Tournament for Guinness World Records and the North American Video Game Challenge. As technology advanced, games became more sophisticated, setting the stage for a new era of competition.

By mid-decade, Esports events began hitting the airwaves, marking the debut of televised gaming competitions. Konami and Centuri also made waves with their Track & Field arcade game competition, which drew over a million players across Japan and North America. As the decade came to a close, the gaming industry was poised to explode on a global scale, waiting for one final push—the public release of the Internet at the turn of the millennium.

The 1990s: The Internet Changes Everything 

The Internet had existed since the 1980s, but it wasn't until 1993 that it became widely available to the public. This shift changed the world—and gaming—forever. Suddenly, games could be linked over the internet, allowing players to compete from different rooms, cities, or even continents. Competitive gaming became a global phenomenon, no longer restricted to local events. Internet cafés also began to pop up worldwide, giving players access to high-powered PCs and helping to fuel the popularity of online multiplayer games.

The 1990s didn’t just bring online play—it also saw the rise of head-to-head competition. Street Fighter II made direct player-vs-player matches mainstream, and in 1996, the Evolution Championship Series (EVO) was founded as a permanent Esports fighting game tournament. During this decade, companies like Nintendo and Blockbuster also sponsored major video game competitions. The first Nintendo World Championships toured 29 U.S. cities in 1990, crowning champions in different age groups and awarding prizes that included a Geo Metro Convertible.

Esports events only grew in scale as the decade progressed. By 1997, over 2,000 players entered the Quake tournament "The Red Annihilation," with the final 16 flown to Atlanta for a showdown at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. The grand prize? A Ferrari once owned by the game’s programmer, John Carmack. Dennis Fong emerged victorious, driving off in the Ferrari and cementing competitive gaming’s bright future. The 1990s were pivotal for gaming, but they were just the beginning of Esports’ explosive growth in the new millennium.

The 2000s: The Gaming Revolution

After the Y2K hype settled, the 2000s saw Esports catapult into the mainstream. Technology started improving exponentially, and consoles began to catch up to PCs in terms of popularity. South Korea had the first World Cyber Games (WCG). Major League Gaming (MLG) followed in 2002, and a year later, the first Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC) was played in France. 

By 2005, Esports hit a major milestone when the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) offered a $1 million prize pool. Gamers around the world competed in Painkiller for a chance at the finals in New York, where Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel took home one of the largest prizes in Esports history, broadcast live on MTV.

As prize pools swelled, streaming platforms like Twitch emerged, making Esports more accessible to fans worldwide. Twitch quickly became the go-to hub for watching live gaming events, racking up billions of views and fueling the Esports boom. The growth of online streaming also helped solidify Esports as a spectator sport, with tournaments reaching larger and more dedicated audiences.

With broadcasting now more affordable and centralized through Twitch, Esports became more viable as a product and viewership and prize money increased drastically. Nintendo made its return to competitive gaming with the 2010 Wii Games Summer, attracting 400,000 participants. The popularity of Super Smash Bros. led Nintendo to revive its World Championships in 2015 and 2017, a sign of the industry’s resurgence. By 2009, Esports competitions offered a combined $2 million in prize money—a figure that skyrocketed in the following years, reaching $10 million by 2012.

During this period, Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) games like League of Legends and Dota 2 took center stage, with prize pools growing rapidly. The first League of Legends World Championship in 2011 had a $100,000 prize pool, which ballooned to $6.45 million by 2018. Meanwhile, Dota 2's The International made waves with a $1 million grand prize in its debut year, eventually setting a record-breaking $40 million prize pool in 2021.

Other top contenders like the Fortnite World Cup and PUBG Global Championship also boasted multi-million-dollar prize pools, cementing Esports as a global phenomenon. By 2019, total prize pools exceeded $200 million across more than 5,400 competitions. Even the COVID-19 pandemic couldn’t slow Esports down, as the industry adapted to online-only formats, continuing its upward trajectory fueled by ever-growing viewership and innovative technology.

The Future of Esports 

While some from older generations may still scoff at Esports as "real" sports, the landscape is rapidly shifting. The gaming industry saw an astonishing market value of $175.8 billion in 2021, and it's projected to hit $200 billion by 2023. Esports viewership is at an all-time high, even surpassing traditional events like the NFL’s Super Bowl in some cases.

Experts suggest that mobile devices like smartphones and tablets could become the future of Esports, potentially overtaking consoles and PCs. Meanwhile, some governments are exploring restrictions over health concerns related to gaming. Despite these challenges, investment in Esports teams and competitions is booming, with tens of millions of dollars pouring in, and no signs of slowing down.

As Esports continues to grow, the future looks brighter than ever for this rapidly expanding industry. Its momentum shows no signs of stopping.