Dota 2 television gaming

Dota 2 television gaming

It appears that video games are poised to make a run at the broadcast television market next year, beginning with a block of programming on TBS Friday nights that will reintroduce American audiences to the idea of competitive gaming. Well, “competitive gaming” is what we used to call it back in the early days of tournament gaming when a few cable networks attempted to broadcast them to lackluster ratings. Nowadays, the act of playing video games in large competitive tournaments is called eSports, because Americans love sports and putting a lower-case “e” in front of Sports isn’t that noticeable.

What makes video games’ transition into televised eSport so exciting for both television and gaming is the disparity between the number of people that already tune in online to watch someone else play a video game and the amount spent on television advertising attempting to hit targeted consumers based on programming.

Online, video game streaming platforms such as Twitch are engaging millions of viewers in playthroughs and commentary videos as well as competitive play in first person shooters and beyond. Major venues in US cities including New York’s Madison Square Garden have been host to eSporting events and are attended like conventions by advertisers seeking the eyeballs of the video game demographic. The audience is there, but the advertising dollar for online streaming of eSports still pales in comparison to the advertising dollars spent on broadcast television.

Right now, Turner Broadcasting System Inc. which owns TBS is planning to air Counter Strike: Global Offensive eSports on Friday nights in 2016. That’s some hot shooter action right to your TV set from a channel whose slogan was “Very Funny” less than a decade ago.

Turner isn’t going soft with this debut either, they’ve partnered with the talent agency William Morris Endeavor and their IMG sports and media division to deliver a program that is similar in format to Major League Baseball or College Basketball games, but for Counter Strike. “There’s a lot of eSports fans out there that don’t realize they’re eSports fans yet,” Tobias Sherman, the head of IMG’s eSports division told The Los Angeles Times. “This gives us a chance to broadcast to the wide audience.”

Although Counter Strike is the only announced game from TBS at the moment, there has been a recent groundswell in big eSports tournaments in the first person shooter genre. Activision has announced that the Call of Duty World League would debut in January 2016 and will have a prize pool of $3 million dollars. The League will have two divisions, one for professional gamers and another for amateur players who might aspire to be professional gamers. Microsoft is also launching a first person shooter tournament later this year with The Halo World Championship which will have a not-insignificant $1 million dollar prize pool.

International eSports aren’t just first person shooters, of course. The Defense of the Ancients Warcraft Mod (Dota for short) and Dota 2 have massive international tournaments, the largest of which is actually called “The International.” International 2015 had a prize pool of over $11.4 million dollars.

All these big numbers for video game prizes might serve as a gauge of interest in the sport, but the competitive gaming community could trade some of that interest in for television advertising dollars. If TBS’ televised block of eSports programming manages to do even modest numbers in the ratings suck that is Friday night television, it could lead to greater exposure of competitive gaming to potential fans and future gamers. Not to mention new opportunities to connect with all the mainstream ad money of this country’s Wal-Marts and McDonalds restaurants.

With so much scripted television programming performing so well through online streaming, the only advertising safe haven left on the broadcast airwaves seems to be live sports. After being driven to the internet to watch people play video games for money, it would be interesting to see the internet give back to cable by producing an entirely new form of live sport to market to a broadcast audience.