Esports
form of competition that is facilitated by electronic systems, particularly video games
Esports ( ), short for electronic sports, is a form of competition using video games. Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, played individually or as teams.
Multiplayer competitions were long a part of video game culture, but were largely between amateurs until the late 2000s and early 2010s when the advent of online streaming media platforms, particularly YouTube and Twitch, enabled a surge in participation by professional gamers and spectators. By the 2010s, esports was a major part of the video game industry, with many game developers designing for and funding tournaments and other events.
Esports first became popular in East Asia, particularly in China and South Korea (which first licensed professional players in 2000) but less so in Japan, whose broad anti-gambling laws prohibit prize pools for professional gaming tournaments. Esports are also popular in Europe and the Americas, which host regional and international events.
The most common video game genres associated with esports are multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), first-person shooter (FPS), fighting games, card, battle royales, and real-time strategy (RTS) games. Popular esports franchises include League of Legends, Dota, Counter-Strike, Valorant, Overwatch, Street Fighter, Super Smash Bros. and StarCraft. Among the most popular tournaments are the League of Legends World Championship, Dota 2's International, the fighting game-specific Evolution Championship Series (EVO) and Intel Extreme Masters.
The public source identifies “Esports” as form of competition that is facilitated by electronic systems, particularly video games. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Esports, form and competition.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Esports”, the useful work is to connect “form of competition that is facilitated by electronic systems, particularly video games” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q300920. The Library of Congress control number is sh2019102850. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2000.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Esports” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.