Gaming League Team Contracts Worth up to $1 Million
By Andrew on Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 at 5:59 PM PST In Gamer Life, Games Industry
Texas is a hot spot for gaming, with Dallas being the birthplace for Cyberathelete Professional League. Over the years, financial interest in the scene has grown tremendously, with $35 million in investments for Major League Gaming in 2002 alone, pushing the professional gaming market even further.
And some four-player teams are now even signing on to leagues for million dollar contracts.
With different leagues and sponsors trying to nab top names, the gaming leagues are shaping up to be something more on the level of traditional professional sports. And the fact that CBS is going to be airing the most recent World Series of Video Games tournament as a one-hour special this fall definitely adds some prestige.
“My goal is that, five years from now, you flip on TV or the radio or open up a newspaper, and we’re sitting there next to other traditional sports,” Sundance DiGiovanni, co-founder and chief marketing officer for Major League Gaming, told the Dallas News.
I’ve already made my own comparisons to Poker TV. That has latched on more than anyone ever though, and Marty Stratton, id Software’s executive producer, could not agree more.
“Ten years ago, would you have considered it fun to watch someone play poker on TV?” he said in the Dallas News article.
The television aspect of the leagues are going to be a key component to whether or not the leagues will end up in the Sports section of your newspaper. I have a feeling you’ll be reading about gaming results online for quite some time before you’ll read them in print. Newspapers are an archaic medium, and it might be fitting that gaming scores will stay digital.
But should the TV aspect of the leagues get better and better, as they should, gaming will become more of a household name.
Source: Dallas News
