Can ELEAGUE Stick On In The Mainstream?

With twenty-four teams competing in an enormous arena setting for their share of $1.4 million dollars and Counter Strike glory, ELEAGUE represents something that sounded too perfect to be true when we were young. Let us not say that Turner Broadcasting Systems is redefining sports with “esports”.

Just because a game is exciting doesn’t mean it’s a sport. But at the same time, there are those who say watching people play video games is just stupid, and a waste of time. People will always bash on something that they don’t understand. Let’s tell them to cut it out.

Turner Broadcasting Systems is presenting something very familiar; Counter-Strike is not a new product. Watching friends play Counter-Strike is something that has been fun for ages. This is something that can totally work. Young people enjoy streaming video, online culture in general is a big deal, this is an opportunity for them to separate from their phone/tablet/computer and still be watching twelve grown men play a video game.

Turner Broadcasting did a fantastic job making ELEAGUE feel like a real sports experience for those of us who enjoy hockey, football, basketball, etc. They spent less time covering the gameplay itself that some people are a lot more familiar with. Who better to make the sports experience real than Shaquille O’Neal? Viewers are given nice looking tables and charts, highlights, and a rundown on who’s who.

On the night of the premiere, ELEAGUE’s ratings put to shame those of hockey in America. A number they quite like to throw around. But they just don’t have the consistency. The people ELEAGUE is marketing to always seem to be up and on to the next thing, or right back to their other digital devices. They’re hard to pin down.

When we watch ESPN, there’s a lot of news about athlete’s misdoings and personal lives. It could be that that’s not possible in the esports community. Last week on The Late Late Show with James Corden, he talked to Olivia Munn and Chris Pratt about how cool hanging out with Aaron Rodgers was because actors get star struck by athletes even though they’re used to meeting fellow thespians. Those two would not be so giddy talking about meeting a champion Counter Strike player.

The problem Turner Broadcasting Systems may need to solve now is how to give their viewers the same feeling they get from watching their friends play video games from watching ELEAGUE. But people seem to enjoy watching their friends participate in activities more than strangers. Giving those strangers a sense of character and personality is important, otherwise we still just have charts and tables and Shaq talking about kill death ratios. How that’s done seems unsure. But the rise of esports betting could be one way to get people more invested into watching esports competitions.

Turner Broadcasting Systems stands to win big answering the question, “How do we make competitive gamers look like people?” We know what doesn’t work, now it’s just a matter of figuring out if adapting this to a more familiar format is going to make a big enough difference to make it profitable.