league/dota/hearthstone

no fps :(

inb4 call of duty

It's very promising to see, and it makes me wonder how other coverage organisations will adapt to this huge fish now entering. Where the talent will end up as well.

I know they don't have to necessarily televise things like Dota 2 or League of Legends, but can esports be successfully televised? They streamed some sort of MMO on like ESPN13211 or something and I don't remember it being well received.

not even csgo coverage, woah

I'd have to imagine a section for this will be added very soon.

CSGO is getting pretty large, even in the context of these other big staples of the esports scene. I would be really surprised if they don't add it within the year.

You guys have to remember that CS:GO is a game centered around Terrorists planting a bomb before they are shot by counter terrorists, while shooting counter terrorists in the face. It's not the most user friendly game from an outside perspective. I'd say it would be smart to assume any shooter will be very delayed to get to a major network on TV

Hearthstone above CS:GO??

Regardless of your position on the conflict of terrorism (which actually could be spun in a very good light if done well), it has the most history of any esport other than quake (1.6+CSS+GO), and has a prizepool that dwarfs Hearthstone and is probably the 3rd most popular esport at the moment.

Not including the fact that Hearthstone is almost entirely random (I'd argue even poker requires a much higher amount of skill to be elite)

It hasn't been done all that much in the US. Back in the midish 2000s DirectTV hosted the CGS which only lasted a couple of seasons. Granted, esports was no where near as large back then, and economic troubles in the US and around the world around this time didn't help either, and they had to shut it down.

ESPN hosted Heroes of the Dorm on ESPN2 last year (College Heroes of the Storm tournament). Ratings for it weren't really all that good (apparently a 0.1 on the Nielsen ratings), but this was really one of the first televised esports events in the US. ESPN was apparently happy with it according to an article I read.

TBS will be hosting the ELeague coming up this summer, which will be a better tell of how televised esports will work out in the US I think. Being that it's CSGO, it would probably work out a little better just because of the fact that your average person flipping through channels would be able to watch it and quickly understand the general idea of the game; shoot people, try to attack/defend the bomb site. Whereas a MOBA would be much tougher to understand for someone that has never seen it before I think. At least that's my take on it, but I also don't play or really like MOBAs all that much.

we could spin it in a good light by making every map to be as ct sided as nuke so the good guys always win!! ez tv coverage

i watched that CGS shit when it was on directTV when i had that service
was actually pretty cool watching competitive DoA and i think source was being played too

It had CS:S, DoA, FIFA and some racing games I believe.

Too bad they aren't showing any particularly good games, let me know when they have something worth watching like CS, Smash, or TF

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCHwYyB-pjQ

ESPN covers competitive scrabble so I think we might have a chance

a hell of a lot more people have played or at least heard of scrabble than tf2

but yet we see zombie terrorist getting shot by a group of non zombie terrorist on tv kappa.

I hope street fighter V gets added. (and tf2 once it blows up from matchmaking HYPE)

it'd be cool if they covered streetfighter and maybe even starcraft

The Halo tournament last week at X-Games was streamed on ESPN3!

hired to be espn's tf2 insider hype