Esports at the Garden? I'm game

I took one of my sons to see some five-on-five action at Madison Square Garden last Saturday night, but we weren't watching the Knicks. Instead, in the center of the fabled arena was a stage on which the 10 combatants, each wearing a uniform, sat in front of individual computer screens with keypads and a mouse. Their competition was shown to fans on giant LED screens perched over the stage, drawing an often frenzied reaction from the packed house.

Such was my introduction to the world of esports, as we watched the League of Legends World Championship Semi-Finals. Needless to say it was quite an eye-opener for someone old enough to remember the advent of "Pong" on a black-and-white television screen.

"Esports is the sport of the digital generation," explained Nathan Lindberg as we sat watching the action. "For terrestrial parents, that can be a tough sell, but even if you don't quite get the game, it can be nostalgic and will bring back some memories."

Lindberg is the director of global esports sponsorships at Twitch, which Amazon purchased for nearly $1 billion in 2014. Twitch is the largest social network for video-game fans and, last year, its users streamed 241 billion minutes of video. As we watched Samsung Galaxy battle H2K in front of 20,000 fans who shelled out $46 to $61 to watch in person, Lindberg handed me his phone, which showed that an additional 500,000 were watching online from all over the world.

No wonder, then, that "there are a few behemoths in the space and a lot of emerging competitors trying to not only compete, but also to become part of the overall revenue stream - from live events to sponsorships to ad dollars to consumer products and more," according to Matthew Lieberman, a director at PwC, the multinational professional services network.

"With esports now finding homes on traditional TV, and mainstream sponsorships now occurring, there is a mad dash for companies to capitalize on a piece of the esports pie," Lieberman said.

For the uninitiated - which included me until last weekend - League of Legends is the online, new millennium version of Capture the Flag. Lindberg told me that League is the most popular video game in the world, enjoyed by 100 million each month. When it came out in 2008, he was one of the lucky 100 or so who were invited to beta-test the game. The 33-year-old who used to sit and watch his brother and sister play GoldenEye knew it was going to be a hit, in part because of the low barrier entry that allows even those with a mediocre laptop to play.

League was one of the first games in the genre of multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) competition. Other categories of esports include: fighting, as in Mortal Kombat; first-person shooting such as Call of Duty; or massively multiplayer online (MMO) games, like World of Warcraft.

League is free to play and the world's best players, with cool-sounding, one-word names, can earn millions for their play. "Faker" is the LeBron James of esports and reportedly makes millions each year.

"Not bad for a 22-year-old," noted Lindberg, as we watched the South Korean team of Samsung Galaxy, coached by "Edgar," winning handily through the efforts of CuVee, Ambition, Crown, Ruler, CoreJJ, and Wraith. H2K, coached by "Pr0lly," is the only competitive Western team and, despite featuring no Americans, was regarded as the home team at the Garden. It was led by "FORG1VEN" and featured Odoamne, Jankos, Ryu, Vander, and Freeze.

Samsung Galaxy and H2K were vying to determine who would play against the victor of the prior night's five-hour match between SK Telecom T1 v. ROX Tigers, which also drew a packed house at the Garden.

"Those two are the best in the world," said Lindberg. "Think of the Red Sox and Yankees, ALCS 2004."

Like darts, pool, and chess, I'm still coming to terms with video games defined as sports, but I left the venue a little less concerned about our future resting in the hands of kids who today are tethered to their computers in their bedrooms. The audience was about the same age as what I saw at the Eagles home opener at the Linc, but there was no visible hostility, much less any fighting. The Garden was a pretty diverse and happy place. And the only profanity I recall hearing was my own, when I spilled my beer, which by the way, was sold throughout the Garden concourse.

On the profile of the fans, a report this year from PwC noted:

"A negative stigma has long been associated with the act of playing video games: enthusiasts lack maturity, motivation, sociability. Telling someone you spent the weekend slaving over your gaming console would make it seem as though you'd sat alone in a basement for three days partaking in a slightly shameful activity. Yet, a slow but steady shift has occurred over the years, pushing the act of gaming closer toward acceptance."

Lieberman echoed those sentiments.

"The entire perception of video gamers has changed drastically," he said, "ranging from some parents and educators, who encourage video gaming to help with areas including hand/eye coordination and strategic thinking; to players who are increasingly more diverse in terms of gender, age, and ethnicity; to governments, who are now sponsoring esports' competitions as public events; to universities, who have now started offering esports athletic scholarships. While the stigma slowly erodes, revenue to companies significantly increases, prestige to esports grows, including cash prizes and medals. The tides have and will continue to turn."

In the span of three hours, Samsung Galaxy defeated H2K, 3-0. This weekend they will compete against SK Telecom T1 in the Summoner's Cup finals at a packed Staples Center in Los Angeles.

Michael Smerconish can be heard from 9 a.m. to noon on SiriusXM's POTUS Channel 124 and seen hosting "Smerconish" at 9 a.m. Saturdays on CNN.