Team competitions have attracted many more participants and viewers, just as football championships attract more attention than competitions in individual sports. It is much more interesting to watch them because they showcase not only the individual skills of the players, but also the teamwork. In a team game, it is often important to be more than just the best sniper or melee fighter. You need to be able to cover your teammates or wait until the game requires it. In such games, a group of talented loners will lose even to medium-sized but well-coordinated teams. The team will simply catch them one by one while they try to win personally.
And team games became the basis around which esports in its modern form was formed. Successful teams of the first generations quickly transformed into esports organizations. Not just a group of dedicated game enthusiasts, but commercially successful projects with several teams competing in different esports disciplines.
Sponsors played an important role in the rapid development of esports. These are not only manufacturers of gaming peripherals, but also companies wishing to attract the main audience of computer games – young people. Many of them have supported and continue to support one or more esports teams. Occasionally, they even become title sponsors, assigning their name to the chosen team. For brands, this is advertising and image enhancement, and for esports players, it is an opportunity to devote all their time to honing their skills rather than spending it on solving “mundane” problems. In fact, participation in esports organizations has turned into the same kind of work as playing in traditional professional sports leagues.
And, of course, esports would not be a sport without its competitions. Here, too, sponsors have played a huge role. Thus, many tech (and not only) companies have organized their own tournaments in popular games at least once. The contribution of Samsung, the company that brought esports competitions to the international level by becoming the main sponsor of the WCG (World Cyber Game, the esports equivalent of the Olympic Games, held annually from 2000 to 2014), is worth mentioning here.
Intel also had a great influence. Having decided to organize the Intel Extreme Masters tournament, it accelerated the development of its contractor for the event – the European esports organization Electronic Sports League. Thanks to Intel’s support, ESL was able to create one of the largest esports leagues represented by both local amateur competitions and professional tournaments of the international level.