Blizzard Launches A Professional Sports League For 'Overwatch' (usatoday.com)

An anonymous reader quotes USA Today: One of Blizzard Entertainment's hottest video games is making the jump into a professional sports league. [Blizzard] announced Friday the launch of Overwatch League, a professional video gaming league kicking off its inaugural season during the second half of 2017... Blizzard says the league will combine competitive video gaming -- better known as eSports with hallmarks of professional sports leagues like the National Football League, complete with teams based in various cities worldwide featuring owners who will cultivate team and player development... Blizzard will start by recruiting prospective owners representing cities in the Americas, Europe, Asia and other parts of the globe... Players who get picked up by a team are guaranteed contracts complete with benefits, and owners will be required to take steps to develop their players and grow their fan bases.
Overwatch already has 20 million players after just four months. Could professional videogame competitions someday become more popular than football?

Comments

Re:Pathetic.

[alvinrod]

As a form of entertainment is it really any worse than watching television? You could pretty much make the same argument for any other widely accepted form of entertainment (e.g., watching a movie (i.e., watching other people pretend to be something they're not), listening to music (i.e., hearing a recording of some other people blowing air, physically striking, or using other means to produce vibration), reading a book, etc.) in that you could go outside instead. Of course if that's the crux of the argument, there's nothing stopping you from doing it while you're running on a treadmill.

Almost any form of human entertainment seems rather silly when you stop to look at it. Most don't produce anything of material worth or have an extrinsic value unless they're being done professionally.