{"id":6793,"date":"2012-09-29T17:42:15","date_gmt":"2012-09-29T22:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/?p=6793"},"modified":"2012-09-29T17:42:15","modified_gmt":"2012-09-29T22:42:15","slug":"how-video-games-are-becoming-the-next-great-north-american-spectator-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/?p=6793","title":{"rendered":"How video games are becoming the next great North American spectator sport"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>They&#8217;re all here to watch professional gaming teams battle it out in the North American regional finals in League of Legends, a PC action-strategy game that has exploded in the competitive video gaming scene over the past year. The tournament&#8217;s winning team will take home $40,000 and a trip to the World Championship in October, where the victor will net $2 million and international fame.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>via <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gaming\/2012\/09\/how-video-games-are-becoming-next-great-north-america-spectator-sport\/\">How video games are becoming the next great North American spectator sport | Ars Technica<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In the last year or so, though, eSports has undergone a sudden exponential growth. The Major League Gaming Spring Championship in June (which featured tournaments in four high-profile games like <em>Starcraft II <\/em>and<em>\u00a0Mortal Kombat<\/em>) attracted 4.7 million online viewers over three days in June, peaking at 437,000 concurrent viewers. That&#8217;s substantially more than all of their 2011 events combined. Over 2.2 million viewers tuned in to Ustream internet broadcast of the 2011 EVO fighting game championships from a packed ballroom in Las Vegas.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They&#8217;re all here to watch professional gaming teams battle it out in the North American regional finals in League of Legends, a PC action-strategy game that has exploded in the competitive video gaming scene over the past year. The tournament&#8217;s &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/?p=6793\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[378],"tags":[661,525],"class_list":["post-6793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marketing","tag-gaming","tag-market-trends"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6793"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6794,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6793\/revisions\/6794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}