Watch eSports on ESPN2 for the first time ever this weekend
The final round of the collegiate championship for Heroes of the Storm — Blizzard’s answer to hugely popular MOBA games League of Legends and Dota 2 — will be broadcast live on ESPN2 on Sunday at 6:30PM PT. That’s prime time, baby. This marks the first time that ESPN will air an eSports match on live TV; it hosted the League of Legends finals last year online only, and that stream brought in more viewers than the NBA Finals or the deciding game in the World Series. Also last year, ESPN2 aired a documentary about Dota 2 and ESPN3 hosted an online stream of that game’s championships. Professional gaming is a booming business, with the top title, League of Legends, bringing in an estimated $1 billion in 2014 alone.
It’s smart for ESPN to test the waters with the “Heroes of the Dorm” tournament, ahead of this year’s Dota 2 and League of Legends championships. If it does well, maybe this experiment will convince ESPN president John Skipper that eSports are, in fact, viable for his channel. In September, Skipper had the following to say about eSports: “It’s not a sport, it’s a competition. Chess is a competition. Checkers is a competition. Mostly I’m interested in doing real sports.” Fast forward to this week: The Heroes of the Storm collegiate championships kick off, online-only via ESPN3, at 2:30PM PT on Sunday, and then transition to ESPN2 for the final round at 6:30PM PT.
Via: VentureBeat
Source: Heroes of the Dorm
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