> I really feel like Esports should have been built up slowly around more first principles. Keep the overhead as low as possible in the beginning. You're just g

> I really feel like Esports should have been built up slowly around more first principles. Keep the overhead as low as possible in the beginning. You're just going to be losing money in the beginning so why not minimize that cost. that was also tried. on the surface, it looks like eSports has come out of nowhere, but people have been trying to make the economics work out for decades now. the earlier attempts looked a lot more like the scrappy model you are describing. disclaimer: this is a counterstrike-centric history bc that's what I was interested in at the time. I understand the starcraft (for example) pro scene was a bit more stable. CPL was started in 1997, and distributed a mere $3mm in prize money between then and its 2008 demise. then there was CGS, which weirdly tried to replicate the American football TV experience. that league was notable at the time for actually paying players a salary (though only about $30k iirc). then things were mostly dormant (in terms of capital investment) until twitch took off and the game companies themselves took a more active interest in the scene, leading to the massive prize pools and tournaments you see today. maybe we just haven't hit the right moment for esports to be economically viable, but to me it seems like something is fundamentally broken with the idea. it's telling that top twitch streamers make more money than the world's best competitive players of that game. imagine a world where ray lewis in his prime could make more money live streaming random pickup games and reading donation messages out loud. the NFL could not exist in that world.