What is MLG? | Major League Gaming скачать в хорошем качестве

What is MLG? | Major League Gaming

What is MLG? Esports Maybe is now Esports in a Nutshell Mark Register explains it all: Major League Gaming is an Esport tournament organizer with 10MM registered users, broadcaster to 20MM viewers a month, and now apart of Activision Blizzard’s well funded and led Esports Tournament division. MLG got its start in 2002 with founders Sundance DiGiovanni & Mike Sepso who said they crashed and burned when they started because they didn’t understand each game tournament's unique culture so they hired key people that specialized in the competition side of each game and let them lead and help grow the company. MLG gave amateur players the opportunity to join as a registered user playing their choice of 40 titles and gaining MLG Pro Points to become identified as a pro in hopes to be selected to compete in MLG’s Pro Circuit Premier competitions which led to MLG’s Championship events. In 2006 MLG Pro Circuit ran the first televised console game league, Halo 2 Pro Series on USA Network and began investment round funding led by Oak Investment Partners & Ritchie Capital that over the next 6 years would bring them $69MM in funding. 2012 was MLG’s best year when they began integrating their content with CBSi & GameSpot.com, landed exclusive access to Starcraft players in the Korean Esports Association, and saw a unique viewership of 4.7MM for their Starcraft II Pro Circuit Spring Championship event. Viewership fell after that and in 2015 their Call of Duty Championship saw a peak concurrent viewership of 205k In 2014 they opened a 14k square foot arena in Columbus Ohio and announced plans with Lai Fung Holdings Limited and eSun Holdings Limited to build a MLG arena on Hengqin Island in China by 2017. In 2015 Co Founder Mike Sepso left MLG to help lead Activision Blizzard’s new Esports division, the following year Activision buys up MLG and their $6MM of debt for $49MM. Since 2002 MLG ran 66 competitions for Counter Strike, Call of Duty, Halo, Starcraft, League of Legends, Tekken, Mortal Kombat, Super Smash Bros Melee and more; acquired a cast of commentators, pro streamers, and brand name that rose through the ranks in the best of times and worst of times. Even with $69MM in funding MLG was strangled by a few key bottlenecks, capital tied up in construction of their large scale arenas, limited access to top tier Esport games to broadcast, and limiting their broadcasts to their proprietary video streaming platform which many complained about the frequency of ads. Luckily Activision can loosen their bottlenecks of capital, access to growing top tier games, but unless they license the streams to others or make it available for free, broadcasts will be limited to MLG.tv & Activision’s closed platforms. Also it will be interesting to see how Activision Blizzard’s relationship with ESL will progress given they’ve been running many of their Esports tournaments like Blizzcon. MLG once a league of their own, now in the Majors.