KosICT eSports Championship – Professional eSports initiative
Electronic sports, generally known as eSports are a new form of sport in computer games, which in recent years got recognition across the world. The young gamers are developing for-profit career, where investments in this sport have exceeded millions.
Most often, eSports take the form of a competition organized as video game, especially among professional players. The most common genre of video games associated with eSports are: 1. “Real Time Strategy” and “First Person Shooter”.
eSports is one of the most popular sport around the world and international tournaments have gained special respect and support of many institutions, companies and organizations. Various international competitions now livestream from famous media broadcasts as ESPN, Daily Dot, Yahoo etc.
This electronic sports scene has very little support in Kosovo and so far has been in the hands of self-initiatives of these sports enthusiasts. While eSports still has a long way to go before it becomes famous as basketball or football, SuperData Research, a company based in New York who follows the sector, said that the global market of eSports will grow from $748m for $1.9bn at the end of 2018. In 2015 about 188 million people have watched the games being played online and on TV, from 71.5 million in 2013.
Kosovo Association of Information and Communication Technology (STIKK, www.stikk.org) has found it reasonable to intervene and be the first professional organization to offer its support by working toward this direction.
STIKK within the International Conference KosICT will organize tournament in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), an event which will be followed with great attention during the conference where they will eventually declared the winner of the first place with 1,000 €. The official date of the event is the beginning of October, while the main event will take place on 27 October 2016. KosICT eSports Championship event already is on facebook (facebook.com/kosictchamp), where you can follow the open calls for teams applying and other information regarding the championship.
