Modern Times Group, a Swedish media company, just bought a majority (74%) of shares in Turtle Entertainment which operates the Electronic Sports League.
The CEO of the newly acquired ESL, Ralf Reichert, has said, in an interview with Fortune, that “over the past year they’ve talked to many potential suitors, including large media companies, but they opted to go with MTG because of the company’s understanding of eSports, production background, and distribution network”. So, the whole idea is to bring eSports to the world in a big way; this is made easier by the fact the MTG is already in over 100 countries.
According to wikipedia, after a rename in 2000, ESL was founded in Cologne, Germany, making it the “the oldest league of its kind in the world”. What does that kind of heritage actually buy you? Well, the men and women over at ESL believe that the potential for eSports is massive and with the additional avenue of electronic gambling to make the future more lucrative, MTG could be making a huge investment.
Another telling statistic about eSports is told to Fortune by Jørgen Madsen Lindemann, president and CEO of MTG — “There are now almost as many gamers in the world as traditional sports fans, and eSports is set to become bigger than ice hockey during 2015” ‘says Lindemann’.
As production quality is increased and PR teams work furiously to try and make eSports as large as traditional sports, gamers and the like can only benefit from a world where playing video games can provide the players with that special kind of victory only competitive sports can bring. As well as bloodlust…
So, are you going to give up your day job and commit 10 hours a day to League of Legends? Let us know in the comments below.
