48 Fun Facts About Esports

The earliest known video game competition, held at Stanford in October 1972, was played on which game?

Spacewar, written at MIT in 1962, spread through university labs as programmers modded it; Stanford's variant let five ships battle at once.

What was the grand prize at the 1972 Stanford video game tournament?

A Rolling Stone subscription, for a year: the magazine paid for the night's beer and prizes and sent Stewart Brand and photographer Annie Leibovitz to cover it.

Which 1980 Atari contest, with regional finals across the US, crowned 16-year-old Rebecca Heineman national champion?

The Space Invaders Championship launched Heineman's career: three years later she co-founded Interplay Productions with Brian Fargo.

Which high-score record-keeping organization did Iowa arcade owner Walter Day found?

Twin Galaxies took its name from the Ottumwa, Iowa arcade Day bought in 1981, and its scoreboard became the official supplier of video game scores to Guinness World Records.

Which 1991 game popularized head-to-head tournament play over high-score chasing?

Street Fighter II revived the arcade business in 1991, and its one-on-one mode, where beating an opponent mattered more than a high score, set off a boom in rival fighting games.

What did Dennis 'Thresh' Fong win at the 1997 Quake tournament Red Annihilation?

John Carmack's Ferrari 328: Fong turned out not to be insured to drive it, so Carmack agreed to cover his insurance for a year.

Blizzard suspended Hong Kong pro Blitzchung in 2019 after he backed the city's protests on a stream for which game?

Hearthstone: after a public outcry, Blizzard gave back Blitzchung's prize money and cut his one-year suspension to six months.

Which song did K/DA, a virtual girl group, debut at the 2018 League of Legends World Championship?

Pop/Stars debuted with an augmented-reality show created to promote new K/DA character skins, which players could then buy inside League of Legends.

Which company backed the World Cyber Games, dubbed the 'Olympics of esports,' launched in 2000?

Samsung backed the World Cyber Games, held every year until 2013, before the event vanished for six years and was revived in Xi'an, China, in 2019.

Which country's LAN-party company Ligarena founded the Electronic Sports World Cup in 2003?

France: Ligarena scaled its small LAN Arena parties up into the ESWC, holding the early finals at the Futuroscope theme park near Poitiers.

Twitch launched in June 2011 as a gaming spin-off of which general-interest streaming site, later shut down by its parent?

Justin.tv began in 2007 as one channel streaming founder Justin Kan's life around the clock; as Twitch outgrew it, the parent company shut the old site in 2014.

Which company paid $970 million for the streaming site Twitch in August 2014?

Amazon: Google's reported deal to buy Twitch through YouTube fell through first, clearing the way for Amazon's all-cash bid.

What is the name of the trophy awarded to League of Legends world champions?

The Summoner's Cup, first crafted by Thomas Lyte for the 2012 final, was redesigned by Tiffany & Co. in 2022; Dota 2's International trophy is the Aegis of Champions.

Which team won the League of Legends World Championship in 2013, 2015 and 2016?

T1, then SK Telecom T1, won those titles with Faker in mid lane, then went years without one before winning three straight from 2023 to 2025.

Where was the first League of Legends World Championship held, in June 2011?

DreamHack Summer in Sweden hosted that first final inside a LAN party, and just two years later the championship final filled Los Angeles's Staples Center.

At the 2017 League of Legends world final, an augmented-reality dragon swooped over the crowd at which Beijing venue?

The Bird's Nest, Beijing's 2008 Olympic stadium, hosted that final, and a year later the same augmented-reality trick put K/DA's singers beside animated champions.

What nickname do fans give League of Legends star Faker?

The Unkillable Demon King: Faker solo-killed veteran star Ambition in his April 2013 debut, and in 2020 he became a part-owner of his team.

Which company runs League of Legends and its World Championship?

Riot Games sold a majority stake to China's Tencent in 2011, and Tencent bought out the remaining shares in 2015.

Where did Valve stage the first Dota 2 International tournament, in 2011?

Gamescom in Cologne: Valve announced the tournament just over two weeks before the show opened, and it doubled as Dota 2's first public showing.

How was The International's record $40 million prize pool of 2021 mostly funded?

Crowdfunded via in-game Battle Passes: a quarter of sales went into the pool, and when spending slipped in 2022 the pool shrank for the first time in a decade.

Which team won back-to-back Internationals in 2018 and 2019, the first repeat champion?

OG had to fight through the 2018 open qualifiers after last-minute roster changes, won the title anyway, then beat Team Liquid 3–1 in 2019 to repeat.

Which Ukrainian team won the very first International in 2011?

Natus Vincere beat China's EHOME 3–1 for the $1 million prize, then lost the 2012 final to another Chinese team, Invictus Gaming.

The Evolution Championship Series (Evo) began in 1996 under what name?

Battle by the Bay grew from a grassroots fighting-game contest into a tournament so big that a joint venture of Sony and RTS bought it in 2021.

'Evo Moment #37,' the famous full parry, was performed by Daigo Umehara against whom at Evo 2004?

Justin Wong's super was parried hit for hit in a 3rd Strike losers' final; Daigo won that match but then lost the grand final to Kenji 'KO' Obata.

Which characters were used in Evo Moment #37?

Daigo's Ken, down to a sliver of health, parried all 15 hits of Chun-Li's super, then finished her with a combo.

Who won the 2019 Fortnite World Cup solo final, taking home the $3 million prize?

Kyle 'Bugha' Giersdorf, 16, scored almost double the points of his closest rival, and hours later hackers hijacked his Twitter and Twitch accounts.

Where was the 2019 Fortnite World Cup held?

Arthur Ashe Stadium, New York staged those finals, but Epic cancelled the next Fortnite World Cup, planned for 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Which rapper joined Ninja on a March 2018 Fortnite stream that broke Twitch's non-tournament record for peak viewers?

Drake: the stream peaked above 635,000 viewers, and in 2019 Ninja quit Twitch for Microsoft's Mixer before returning to Twitch a year later.

Roughly how much did each of the 12 founding Overwatch League teams pay to join the league in 2018?

$20 million: after team owners hired lawyers to push for a break, the league agreed in 2023 to waive the fees they still owed.

What made the Overwatch League's structure unusual for esports?

Permanent city-based franchises, like U.S. pro sports: the model ended in November 2023, when two-thirds of team owners voted to leave the league.

Which Ukrainian Counter-Strike star was ranked the world's No. 1 player by HLTV in 2018, 2021 and 2022?

s1mple, born Oleksandr Kostyliev, stepped away from competition in October 2023, the year after his third No. 1 ranking.

In which country is the Counter-Strike powerhouse Astralis based?

Denmark: Astralis's parent company listed on Copenhagen's First North exchange in December 2019, then shareholders voted to delist it in 2023.

Ninjas in Pyjamas, best known for Counter-Strike, is based in which country?

Sweden: Ninjas in Pyjamas won Counter-Strike's 2001 CPL world championship, later folded, and was revived in 2012 with a CS:GO lineup.

Dutch esports club Team Liquid began as a clan and fan site for which game?

StarCraft: the hobby clan grew into a club valuable enough that an investor group including Magic Johnson bought a controlling stake in 2016.

FaZe Clan was founded in 2010 as a YouTube 'trickshotting' clan for which game?

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: the trickshot clan grew into a Nasdaq-listed company in 2022, but its shares slumped and GameSquare agreed to buy it in 2023.

Esports became an Asian Games medal sport for the first time at the 2022 Games, held in 2023 in which city?

Hangzhou: the COVID-19 pandemic forced the Olympic Council of Asia to postpone those Games by a year, from September 2022 to September 2023.

Which city hosted the IOC's first Olympic Esports Week in June 2023?

Singapore staged the finals at the Suntec convention centre, and esports insiders criticized the IOC for picking games like Just Dance and Tic Tac Bow over popular titles.

Which organization won the inaugural Esports World Cup Club Championship in Riyadh?

Team Falcons, the Saudi club, had been signing proven champions and star coaches to build 'superteams' in several games.

Which classic game did the Esports World Cup add to its 2025 line-up?

Chess: its arrival set esports clubs scrambling to sign grandmasters, and Team Liquid landed world No. 1 Magnus Carlsen.

Which country's broad anti-gambling laws long prevented prize pools for pro gaming tournaments?

Japan: its laws against gambling and excessive prizes long capped tournament winnings at about ¥100,000, a big reason esports took off in Korea and China first despite Japan's arcade heritage.

Which 1990 event toured the U.S. and held its finals at Universal Studios Hollywood?

The Nintendo World Championships then went dormant for 25 years, until Nintendo revived them for an anniversary contest at E3 in 2015.

Which US TV game show, running from 1982 to 1984, had contestants battle for arcade high scores?

Starcade's first host, Mark Richards, was replaced after Ted Turner felt he didn't seem to know much about video games, and Geoff Edwards took over.

Which 2007 documentary follows Steve Wiebe's bid to take an arcade high-score record from Billy Mitchell?

The King of Kong raised Mitchell's profile, but in 2018 his Donkey Kong scores were stripped after a ruling that he had used emulation software.

Which band performed at the 2014 League of Legends World Championship in Seoul?

Imagine Dragons wrote 'Warriors' for the tournament and performed live in Seoul, and the partnership later led to 'Enemy', their song for Netflix's Arcane.

In 2013 the US began granting pro gamers the P-1A visa designed for whom?

Internationally recognized athletes: League of Legends' publisher lobbied US immigration officials, and Canadian pro Danny 'Shiphtur' Le became the first gamer to get one.

Which US university created the first officially recognised varsity esports programme, in 2014?

Robert Morris University in Chicago gave League of Legends players scholarships, treating its team like any other varsity squad.

Counter-Strike, a long-running esports shooter, began in 1999 as a fan-made mod of which game?

Half-Life: Minh Le and Jess Cliffe made Counter-Strike as a fan mod, and it grew so popular that they sold the rights to Valve.

Which multi-sport competition first included esports as an official medal event, in 2007?

The Asian Indoor Games in Macau awarded those medals, but in 2008 Qatar pulled out of hosting the 2011 edition, citing unforeseen circumstances.