Esports is probably the fastest growing sport in terms of popularity today. This is primarily due to its highly competitive nature. Another reason for this phenomenal growth in popularity could be that unlike most other sports, it is electronic technology based and the young generation has become fascinated by and hooked to electronic technology. Hundreds of e-sports games are now played featuring many events and competitions. However, only a handful of major electronic sports tournaments truly bring out the games’ tremendous reach. We highlight some of these major tournaments in this article.
ESL ONE Cologne
ESL stands for Electronic Sports League. It is a company based in the Germany city of Cologne which provides esports tournaments and leagues in many different disciplines. Every year during summer it organises the popular e sport event ESL ONE Cologne. More than 15000 esports fans attend this annual tournament in the giant LANXESS Arena to watch, support and cheer their favorite teams. It is indeed an atmosphere which reminds one of the World Cup. The electronic sports games in which the teams participate in belong to CS:GO. Though Cologne is the most common venue for ESL ONE, it is by no means the only one. For example it organised an ESL ONE tournament for CS:GO in Katowice, Poland in 2015 and another in Belo Horizonte Brazil in 2018.
DOTA 2 OMEGA LEAGUE
Where DOTA tournaments are concerned, sponsors have rushed in to put together fantastic prize pools. As a consequence of the fact that the geographical regions where DOTA is most prevalent are landlocked, tournament organisers have decided to split their league across the whole world. In 2020 WePlay and Epic Esports Events organised the Omega League. The event had the largest viewership of any DOTA event at over 400000.
Fortnite World Cup
Epic Games’ Fortnite organised their first ever Fortnite World Cup. It turned out to be a big success. The advent of the battle royale genre has caused great excitement and seen an upsurge in popularity in Fortnite. The 2019 Fortnite World Cup viewership figures took the number spot on. YouTube and the organisers of the tournament, Epic Games declared the games a great success.
Hearthstone World Championship
This is the culmination of the Hearthstone Championship Tour. The title for Hearthstone World Champion is competed for by the top 16 Hearthstone players in the world. 4 players each are drawn from the continents of the Americas, Europe Asia and China .
EVO 2020
EVO is the shortened form of the Evolution Championship Series. It is a large tournament, in fact, the largest where esports fighting teams from all over the world gather to compete. EVO 2020 has on offer 9 supported titles which include amongst others, Street Fighter 5, Super Smash Bros Ultimate and Tekken.
Overwatch World Cup
The Overwatch League is a franchise system league in which 20 teams compete for glory in set seasons during the year. The Overwatch World Cup is unusual in that teams are set up based on the countries or regions from which players come from. South Korea usually dominates though the US triumphed in 2019. The 2020 Overwatch World Cup is set to be held in the last quarter of the year.