With COVID-19 reaching the peak of infectivity, new things are reaching peaks as well. One of those things being eSports.

Due to the national cancellation of sports and even global cancellation of the Olympics, people are looking for more ways to get their ‘sports fix’ in this time of quarantine. Spring sports such as baseball, lacrosse and soccer, are all cancelled on a state, national and global scale in order to slow the spread of the novel virus. 

But no need to fear, ESPN2 announced that on April 5th, they would air 12 consecutive hours of ‘eSports’ throughout the day. One being the Season 8, “Rocket League Championship Series.” (RLCS) airing the Grand Finals of the Series, and after, airing a 16 player NBA 2K championship bracket all at their comfortable homes. Due to the simplicity of connecting online through an internet connection, ESPN decided to go ahead with the deal of allowing the NBA championship bracket to be held live as well as a re-run of RLCS Season 8 Grand Finals. 

This goes to show that eSports are one of the highest-grossing forms of entertainment on Earth currently, pulling over millions of views for one game, League of Legends, all on a major sports network. Even the eSports going to the 2020 Olympics this year is a huge step in a renaissance of gaming for the entire world. The best of the best are going to compete against each other, just like a professional sport. 

All this talk about how a simple game of car soccer, or virtual basketball players scoring buckets, just goes to show how entertaining eSports actually are. For hundreds of thousands to sit in front of a TV screen to watch teenagers go head to head in virtual car soccer or virtual basketball says that people find it entertaining and that eSports have a place in the broad view of entertainment. 

That doesn’t even top it off, though, like I said before, the simplicity of setting something like this up is astounding. To play with people all around planet earth, all you need is an internet connection and a gaming server setup by the game itself. Local area network (LAN) parties are a great example of this. NETWAR 37.0, a LAN party setup in Omaha is the perfect example of a simple gaming get-together and tournament setting. All people need is their gaming console and web connection and they can play with anyone with the same requirements.

With all the changes coming from the world scene, this would be the time that eSports would make a breakthrough in viewership, especially with RLCS Season 9 coming up in the next two weeks.