Video-game tournaments start to click with big-deal sponsors

NEW YORK — Video-game tournaments are drawing big-name sponsors and could become the next big spectator sport in the United States, promoters say.

"Kids in the early 1900s were playing baseball in dirt fields. Kids today are playing computer games," said Jason Lake, an Atlanta real-estate lawyer who owns two teams of pro gamers, totaling 14 players, some of whom did battle last week in the U.S. finals of the World Cyber Games.

More than 108 million Americans play computer games, according to the Yankee Group, a business-and-technology consulting firm.

For a nongamer, the competition last week at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom can't have looked too exciting.

Pale young men crowded around computers on the floor as the cyberspace action unfolded on big-screen displays overhead, accompanied by a play-by-play announcer rattling off things such as, "Schwan's gonna be hiding behind a big box there, waiting for them to come up, and it's 7-0 for the counterterrorists on this map."

About 4,000 spectators showed up at the Hammerstein, organizers said, but more than 63,000 followed the games live on the Web.

More significantly, more than 1 million people around the world have tried to qualify for the final, to be held in Singapore in November. That's mostly a sign of the acceptance that computer gaming (or e-sports, as promoters like to call it) has gained in the rest of the world; just 40,000 of that million were Americans. In South Korea, where the World Cyber Games are based, three cable channels broadcast competitive gaming around the clock and some of the country's approximately 200 professional gamers bask in rock-star-like fame.

In the United States, "there are rock stars already, but the mass market doesn't know about them," said Robert Krakoff, president Razer Group, which makes computer mice and is a major sponsor of the games, along with Intel and Samsung Electronics.

There are signs that the wider corporate world is waking up: Last week, McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals, the Johnson & Johnson subsidiary that makes Tylenol, said it was sponsoring Ouch!, a six-man Counter-Strike team. It is believed to be the first time a noncomputer company has sponsored a U.S. video-game team.

For all the optimism, several hurdles must be overcome if e-sports are to become a mass phenomenon. For one, the violent game content can be off-putting to spectators and advertisers.

Another hurdle is the technology that enables these games. Manufacturers keep putting out new games and game consoles, making the old obsolete. "You have to relearn every year," said pro gamer Matija Biljeskovic.

Lastly, watching the games isn't necessarily enjoyable for someone who hasn't played that particular game. "In older generations ... I don't think this is ever going to have mainstream appeal," Lake said.

When Biljeskovic, 21, tells women he's a serious video gamer, they're not necessarily excited. But then he tells them gaming competitions have taken him to Switzerland, New York and San Francisco.

"They go 'Oh wow, that's awesome!' And of course they ask me to take them with me to Switzerland," he said.