There are few industries that have risen and faded away as quickly as esports.
In the 2010s, competitive gaming had grown beyond South Korea, RTS games, niche forums, and LAN cafes.
Cable was on its way out, Twitch was taking off, and viewership for traditional sports declined whereas the audience for esports rapidly increased.
Esports sold itself as the sport of the future - a world where video game tournaments would surpass the NBA and NFL, where anyone could grind from amateur to superstar, and where gaming would be a viable profession, and stadiums would be packed with thousands of screaming fans.
Marketers had been desperate to reach the younger generations who shunned traditional media channels and advertising.
Only esports boasted such a concentrated and engaged audience of millennials and zoomers.
All this value in theory would be captured by new esports teams and leagues who could monetize these eyeballs through tickets, merchandise, and media rights - the same way that the NBA, NFL, and Premier League have each used viewership to rake in billions over decades.
There was so much hype that everyone expected the economics to solve itself over time.
Around the world, venture capitalists invested millions into emerging teams, game publishers hosted tournaments in world-class venues and broadcasted matches with immense production value, colleges rolled out scholarships for promising pubstompers, prize pools ballooned into millions, pro players were marketed as budding celebrities with best in the world signing 6-7 figure contracts, and passionate rivalries sprouted amongst fanbases.
As esports progressed into the 2010s, the audience and spectacle reached even greater heights.
