STrib: Welcome to e-sports, the next big thing in sports

BleedGopher

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per Zgoda:

Mentioned on ESPN’s “SportsCenter” and recognized by strangers on Manhattan avenues, Brandon Caicedo is basketball’s latest one-and-done who left college in search of fame and fortune.

Virtually …

Timberwolves brethren Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns went before him, but not like Caicedo. He’s a 20-year-old Floridian known as a video-game avatar named “Hood” to a new breed of basketball fan who consumes sports and competition differently, in an alternative world the NBA and its team owners wager is the next big thing.

He also is a new face for the Wolves’ fourth franchise, alongside their NBA, WNBA and G League teams. This new one is “T-Wolves Gaming,” an expansion entry in the growing NBA 2K League that begins its second season in the spring. “NBA 2K” is the name of the game — literally — and this is the first official “e-sports” league operated by a U.S. professional sports league.

People watching people play video games? Really?

You bet.

So do NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and a growing list of forward-thinking, mostly younger owners already involved. That list includes Dallas’ Mark Cuban and others from Golden State, Boston and Milwaukee, who want younger audiences, primarily males 14 to 25.

More and more by the month, colleges across the country offer varsity programs for e-sports — electronic sports — administered by their athletic departments and providing scholarships. Included is Concordia (St. Paul), the first to do so in Minnesota. The purpose: drive enrollment by attracting different types of students.

E-sports are video competitions using games such as “League of Legends,” “Overwatch,” “Dota 2” or cultural phenomenon “Fortnite.” They’re now spectator sports, with 15 million daily streams on websites Twitch and YouTube and live crowds selling out arenas and soccer stadiums from New York to South Korea.

From your couch to worldwide audiences, e-sports has grown exponentially the past four years and are poised to become a $1.4 billion annual global industry that reaches 600 million people by 2020.

“When I was growing up, my parents always said, ‘This will get you nowhere, go do your homework,’ ” Hood said. “Like normal parents.”

All grown up now, he is a professional video-game player and new member of the Wolves/Lynx organization. He will move to Minnesota this winter to practice and compete with five teammates. Each will receive insurance benefits, a retirement plan, housing and a salary that equals what many actual players earn in the NBA’s developmental league, the G League.

Modified from the retail game you might play at home, the 2K League is 5-on-5 basketball. All 10 fictional players are controlled by its own gamer such as Hood or new T-Wolves Gaming teammate Mihad Feratovic, a Brooklyn, N.Y., teenager re-imagined in “2K” as a 6-11 power forward called “IFEAST.”

Teammates are connected by headsets, microphones and their own monitor, and they don’t maneuver a Towns or a Wiggins or any other NBA player on the screen. They manipulate their own characters, with assumed names and invented personalities.

The four-month season that begins in April includes weekend games and interspersed tournaments — which paid out an additional $1 million last season — that can increase participants’ pay well beyond their $35,000 salary. Each franchise’s six-player team lives and practices together in its respective cities and flies every other week to compete in a specifically designed New York City television studio with a live audience.

http://www.startribune.com/welcome-to-e-sports-the-next-big-thing-in-sports/502281051/

Go Gophers!!
 


Overwatch is entertaining. Way better then Hockey.
 




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