The Innovations That Made Modern Esports Possible

The global esports scene has never been in better shape – in fact, since the 2020s we have been witnessing a so-called esports boom in which competitive gaming has succeeded in crossing over into mainstream appeal like never before.

Now no longer a niche concern, esports is commanding huge investment with teams picking up sponsorships from leading brands like Adidas, and whole new stadiums being built from Scotland to India to accommodate future top-flight tournaments.

But how did we get here, and what crucial developments and influences over the years contributed to this watershed moment? Below we’re going to explore the crucial innovations that gave rise to esports’ global takeover.

Streaming Platforms

Back in 2014, Amazon bought the then little widely known streaming platform Twitch for just shy of $1 billion. Those unfamiliar with the product may have found this to be short-sighted, though history has proven Amazon’s investment to be a sage one.

Today Twitch is the de facto home of the online esports community. It’s a bustling creator network of games streamers and fans who collaborate with one another and come together to enjoy all things gaming and esports.

Without the insulating qualities of Twitch it’s questionable whether esports would have reached its crossover moment in the 2020s. As it stood, Twitch became the simple and free place to catch some of the best esports players in the world doing their thing, and this proved a key part of raising the sports’ profile in the eyes of the general public.

It wouldn't be long until YouTube itself was trying to get in on the action with its YouTube Gaming wing, and while this has met with some success, Twitch continues to exert a virtual monopoly on the esports content sector today.

Success of Mind Sports

In addition to creating a context in which esports’ visibility was boosted, it likely wouldn’t have gotten to this point – in the west at least – without the pioneering impact of the Mind Sports scene.

Mindsports can at times be a nebulous concept, but in its essence it refers to sports in which athletes’ mental faculties are tested, rather than their physical prowess. As such one could make a good case for esports being Mind Sports – and this is key as the two terms are indeed hard to separate.

If there’s any real distinction is that esports are electronic sports – i.e. video games – whereas mindsports needn’t be. Chess, for example, is arguably the world’s most popular Mindsport and it has been drawing huge crowds to its prestigious tournaments for over a century.

More recently though, poker has been seen by many to be the archetypal mindsport. Importantly, poker, a casino game, has over the past 25 years or so been most popularly played in its digital incarnations. It was under this guise that the poker boom of the early millennium took place, an event that likely did more than anything else to make the case for the viability of widespread esports competitions today. After all, video games are far more popular on average than card games.

The intervening decades have witnessed the rise of iGaming, the digital wing of the casino industry which is home to a compelling array of modern mindsports – many of which blur the lines with esports today. The tenacious development of the iGaming sector can be largely laid at the feet of dedicated platforms such as VegasSlotsOnline who have made a name for themselves by furnishing prospective patrons with a wide array of sign-up deals for leading digital card and table titles. These offers, which range from no deposit bonus deals to promos on free spins for slots titles, have ensured that iGaming itself is increasingly becoming part of the modern esports story today.

Accessible Technology

Another potent factor in the rise of esports is the decreased cost of components and hardware. While it’s possible to pay more today for a top of the line graphics card than it would’ve cost you to build a top of the line PC a mere decade ago, the bottom line of these peripherals has come down markedly.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with growing sales of gaming laptops, which are now competent and affordable enough to be acquired by a much larger user base than ever before. This has led to more people than ever before finding themselves in a position to directly participate in the scene, bolstering its profile and popularity.