Progaming
by William Celik on 04.05.2019

Top eSports events and games to look for in 2019

E-sports, finally making girls want to have a boyfriend addicted to video games. Today the video game tournaments between the professional players and teams is the fastest growing sport around the world. The most successful professional gamers can make up to a million dollars annually in the realms of E-sports. The hobby that was shared between introverted kids, never leaving the room and playing video games over and over again for 24 hours a day, has become one of the biggest industries in today’s world. Many of these young people who would spend their time playing the games have now become the professional players that are not only doing what they love and enjoy, but also earning a lot of money and getting various prizes with it in different esports competitions.

The popularity of esports tournaments is growing rapidly

It is not only the players that enjoy these tournaments, but millions of people all around the world are also looking forward to the biggest E-sport events annually. In this aspect, the video game industry is already competing against traditional and popular sports. For example, the 2017 League of Legends championship, held in Beijing, China had 106 million viewers, which comes close to the number of viewers that one of the popular traditional sports events Super bowl has drawn. On the same year, the total amount of the views of Super Bowl was 111 million. It is even expected that the total viewers of video gaming tournaments will be 250 million by the end of 2021. Although most of the views for e-sports comes from the Chinese people, professional video gaming is getting more and more popular in other countries as well. For example in the United States of America 38 percent of young people define themselves as fans of e-sports, at the same time, 40 percent of American youngsters say that they are fans of NFL, you can see that the numbers are pretty close to each other. That gives us the idea that soon esports tournaments might become one of the most watched, anticipated and lucrative representatives of gaming industry. This year will be the next step towards it as some of the biggest tournaments will take place. Let’s see the esports events calendar 2019 so you will not miss the most anticipated events of professional gaming.

The popularity of esports tournaments is growing rapidly

Call of Duty world league championship

While there are a lot of games and tournaments, there are some events that are most popular among the lovers of E-sports. One of them is Call of Duty world league championship. It has all began in 2015 when the Call of Duty esports was changed forever with the beginning of Call of Duty World League. Year after the top competitors played in region-based leagues to get an opportunity to compete at the first-ever CWL championship. In the season of 2017 the concept of the game was expanded, as they have introduced the offline Pro League so that the best Call of Duty players from around the world could compete in the high-level matches. Finally, in 2018, the new traditions were brought, as the viewers could see the team banners to recognize its history, accomplishments, and prestige of winning the tournament. As you can see from this overview Call of Duty is constantly suggesting to the players and viewers new and new things and we cannot wait to see what they have for 2019.

The new season of CWL will be one of the biggest esports events Las Vegas 2019. For the new season, there are several changes in the format of the game, for example, Call of Duty world league will change the format of four players to five-versus-five format. There will be no region restriction at any LAN events, meaning that players from around the world will be allowed to come together and compete at CWL events.

Another major change is the increase of the prize pool, in 2019 Call of Duty World league championship the prize pool will be 6 million, which is the largest in Call of Duty esports history.

The first Major event of the 2019 season will take place in Las Vegas from December 7-9.

CWL will also give the chance to the players who want to advance their gameplay to professional level. 2019 will bring the online competition back, allowing players to earn all-important Pro Points. CWL Ladders and Weekly CWL pro point tournaments will begin after launching of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. It will determine the seeding for LAN events, however, the CWL Pro League will be based on LAN results. More information about the online tournaments will be announced later so if you consider to become Pro – stay tuned!

Call of Duty world league championship

Overwatch League Championship

One of the biggest game tournament and most anticipated esports events Los Angeles 2019 is promising a great experience for both players and viewers. There are some big changes for the tournament this year season. The biggest change is the prize pool which is increased from $3.5 million last year to $5 million this year. In addition to this, teams will also compete for about $1.1 million grand prizes in this championship. Speaking of the teams – there are some changes in them as well. For Overwatch League Championship 2019 there will be the bigger number of the teams that will be competing. As we are heading now into the second season, currently there are 20 teams competing with each other across the world. The expansion of the teams represents Vancouver, Toronto, Washington, D.C., Paris, Chengdu, and Hangzhou.

The increase of the teams competing is not the only change, as there are changes in the number of games as well. The teams this year will have fewer matches, instead of 40, the regular matchup amount will be decreased to 28. Another change is the venue, events will not be restricted to only Blizzard Arena, instead of it the games will take place around America throughout the year. Last year Overwatch League ranked as the fourth most-watched channel on Twitch. This year, with the new changes it is expected that the amount of the watches will increase even more. One of the biggest e-sport events this year will begin on February 14 at Blizzard Arena in Los Angeles.

IEM Katowice

IEM Katowice

Are you ready to see how the champions and legends are competing on one of the biggest esports events? Then do not miss the IEM Katowice. It will be the first major championship of CS:GO in 2019 and it should not be disappointing. If you were observing how successful was the competitive CS:GO last year, you might be one of those people who now looking forward to the first major tournament of it in 2019. The championship will start on February 14 and will and on March 3 with the grand final. CS:GO will be starting the tournaments of this year with the event offering $1 million. The event is special because of the other reason too, it will be the first major event held in Katowice, Poland in four years.

Many are expecting this event with great interest and excitement. Since last year, when ELEAGUE Boston Major began the year for competitive CS:GO it was largely regarded and named as one of the most exciting events in the history of esports tournaments. The event even broke the record of the most concurrent viewers on Twitch at that time. We are expecting that the Katowice will have the same hype and we might even see the new record.

The International

The International

The International is one of the esports events in 2019 that you should not miss. It is an event that sets new records for the largest prize pool every year. We expect that The International 2019 will not be different this year in terms of the prize pool and they will follow their tradition. In 2018 the International had the record-breaking prize pool which was nearly $25 million. If the prize will be increased even more this year, this reason only can make the competition one of the most watched video games tournaments in 2019.

As the other events mentioned above, this tournament will see some changes for this year season as well. The major change will be the changes in the venue, the event will not take place in North America as it always did. As it was announced before starting the bracket finals during the International 8, The annual event will be held in Shanghai, China in 2019. It is a very understandable choice as China has the biggest community of the esports lovers and at the same time, it supports Dota 2 like no other country does. The event will take place in Mercedes-Benz Arena Shanghai, it will begin on 20 August and finish on 25 August. As per as the format there are 12 teams that are qualified through Dota Pro Cicruit, another 6 teams will be qualified through Regional Qualifiers, each team from each region as follows: China, Southeast Asia, North America, South America, CIS, and Europe.
Valve has not released much of the additional information about the event yet, but regardless of it, The International 9 is definitely one of the biggest esports events that are ahead of us in this year.

League of Legends world championship

League of Legends world championship

League of Legends world championship is definitely one of the most anticipated one in upcoming esports events 2019. Riot’s world championship events have become some of the most definitive events within esports in recent years. In the entire esports industry, its championship events are the highest-viewed ones. Even in the last year which must have been very hard for Riot Games, the tournament was definitely among one of the bests.
The company had difficulties with the reports of sexual harassment and discrimination within the company and many were thinking that it would also impact on the competitive League of Legends. At the same time, the event had a smaller budget compared to the previous years and even with this difficulty, they have made one of the greatest game tournaments so we can expect that they will try to make it even greater for this time.

There is not much information available about the League of Legends world championship 2019. According to the Riot Game’s announcement last year when they have stated the next 3 countries that will host the event in 2019, 2020 and 2021 years the tournament will be happening in Europe. The championship will take place in Paris, France.

Online esport tournaments

Dreaming about being a professional gamer? Really, who would not love to join the professional team and take the gaming world by storm, but as you can guess it is not that easy, it takes many hours of playing and practice and also getting the qualifications. For those who are big fans of video games and esports tournaments attending and watching the championships are one of the best experiences. But what should I do if there are no esports events near me?
The best way to get in touch with the esport championship is, of course, online tournaments. There are a lot of the championships for the gamers with all kind of taste. Currently, the registrations are open for different kind of tournaments for players of League of Legends, Call of Duty, Fortnite, CS:GO and more. Most of the upcoming tournaments are scheduled for the end of January and beginning of February.

Where can I watch esports?

Where can I watch esports?The best experience of watching esports would definitely be in person. There you can get the full experience and joy of competitive gaming. While the main events such as the competitions described above are held in larger venues there are some of the smaller ones that host the video games competitions.

You can watch esport tournaments online, however, how can you watch them depends on the game itself and differs from tournament to tournament since some of the platforms might get the exclusive rights for broadcasting. The two typical platforms that are largely used are Twitch and youtube. Twitch is a website that is used by the players to stream their games online. Some of the tournaments are shown on TV as well since there are a lot of people watching the TV channels such as BBC has tried to broadcast them in past. But till now Twitch and Youtube remain the best options for the championship viewers.

Some of the tournaments also have the streams for those who are newly introduced to the games and want to know more about it. This kind of streams has their own commentators, which are referred to as casters in esports. While stream goes on these casters talk about the characters and its abilities making it easier for the viewer to understand the game.

What more to expect from esport competitions

Now you have marked all the necessary dates on your esports events calendar 2019. This year will be another huge step in expanding the popularity of esports around the world even more. The times when the world not taking esports seriously is already in the past. Soon we will see children who say that they want to be a professional video games player when they will be asked what they want to become when they grow up. The number of the professional gamers are increasing and so does the number of video game tournaments’ fans around the world.

There’s even more, soon we might also see esports becoming one of the Olympics sports.
As the international esports federation has reported there are deliberations going about including esports in the Olympics 2024 as a demonstration sport at the games. As the Paris bid team said before being named host in September, it would discuss introducing esports with the international Olympic Committee (IOC). At the 2022 Asian Games, competitive video gaming will be a medal event. So if you are not able to attend the upcoming esports events 2019 do not worry about it, there will be even more next year and after several years we might as well see the gaming as a part of the Olympics, before that, when your parents will complain to you about you gaming all day and night, you might as well say that you are practicing for the Olympics.

Author: William Celik

More articles by: William Celik

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