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tournaments led to the creation of professionals<br />
who would earn a living from<br />
their proficiency. The vast improvements<br />
in connectivity, console speeds and<br />
graphics and the surge of online communities<br />
built gaming into a massive<br />
lifestyle phenomenon that penetrated the<br />
lexicons of everyday life.<br />
E-sports gathered more momentum<br />
when broadcasters realised there was<br />
a large audience willing to log-on and<br />
watch other people in action. It has since<br />
become a major video event with studiobased<br />
productions to rival the most popular<br />
of Saturday night TV entertainment<br />
shows. In some countries e-sports finales<br />
have attracted thousands to arenas, with<br />
a level of enthusiasm and fandom to rival<br />
the real version of the sport or activity. A<br />
story on Reuters website earlier this year<br />
predicted that revenue from e-sports<br />
would top 1 billion dollars in 2019.<br />
MotoGP, YAMAHA & ESPORTS<br />
A world-renowned title like ‘Gran Turismo’<br />
fanned the flames of motorsport<br />
competition for PlayStation owners<br />
and F1 launched their own ‘F1 eSport’<br />
contest in 2017 – the same year as MotoGP<br />
– which now boasts a prize pool of<br />
500,000 dollars.<br />
MotoGP had to mobilise to further expose<br />
the sport and the brand to a massive<br />
and predominantly young demographic.<br />
“This is the third year for us and<br />
e-sports and it began because of demand<br />
from sponsors, partners and teams and it<br />
was the start of a long learning process,”<br />
said Dorna MD Pau Serracanta. “Last<br />
year we tried to make it bigger with a live<br />
event and learnt that it was best to have<br />
a real championship with points, just<br />
like MotoGP. We ended up with 46 million<br />
video views and 5.4 million acts of
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