Whether you live and breathe video games or have never played a video game in your life, there is a good chance you’ve heard of eSports. It is a successful business that is estimated to be worth about 1.5 billion by the year 2020.

Today, some eSports’ players compete for prizes that are worth $24 million. eSports is a hard thing to understand and it’s not exactly similar to the type of sports you already associate with competition on a global scale.

If you have heard of eSports, or if you haven’t, this is your guide to know all about what eSports is and how you can participate in it.

What “eSports” actually means

What is eSports? The easiest way to put it is competitive gaming at a professional level. eSports is strictly video games but the games can be anything from sports, real-time strategy, fighting, first-person shooter, multiplayer online battle and more.

Any game that involves a winner and a loser can be considered an eSport, although the more people who actually play the game the more support it will have, which means better competition. Usually, the games that are considered an eSport are popular games such as League of Legends, NBA 2K, or FIFA World Cup.

The majority of eSport games are team-based played in leagues all year round, culminating in one final event. The tournaments are only region-specific, which means North Americans teams only play other North American teams, and European Teams play only other European teams and so on.

In order to compete, you have to already be a professional gamer, the top scorers in the game world in your region. You then get placed on leagues and essentially go against other professional gamers.

What Games Are Considered an eSport?

The games come in all different formats, however lately there have been two main variants; the “MOBAs”, which is a multiplayer online battle arena, and first-person shooters.

MOBAs are all about having two teams play as the heroes and the goal is the kill the opponents in order to gain the advantage to destroy their base that is on the opposite end of the map.

The two most popular MOBAs is League of Legends and Dota. First person shooters (FPSs) is when you swap between showing a player’s perspective then a flying camera when spectating.

Other eSports include popular sports games such as FIFA, and card games. Sports are simple to understand because they are based on real-world sports. However, the strategy games such as StarCraft 2 is when players build armies to defeat each other. Then the card games involve the players to best one another through spells and monsters, and whoever loses all of their health first loses the game.

How Can I Watch All of This?

You can attend and eSporting event and watch your favorite gamers compete. They are generally held in major arenas in large cities. The larger events such as League of Legends, will be held at even larger venues. In 2017 the World Championship final was held at the Beijing National Stadium.

However, you can also watch these games online. Sometimes ESPN will show a tournament on TV, but you want to head over to Twitch and YouTube to find the majority of eSports games.