The NBA Announces Plan To Start Its Own eSports NBA League
from the this-just-got-real dept
eSports has been a thing for some time now. While competitive video gaming was once relegated to some minor tournaments incorporating a few games held in a couple of countries in Asia, eSports has evolved into a wider industry. You can track the progress of it all by its reaching certain checkpoints: viewership numbers that look like those of real-life sporting events, the introduction of college scholarships for eAthletes, and eSports coverage appearing on national broadcasts from the likes of ESPN. The trend line for this has only moved in one direction. And now that appears to be continuing with professional sports leagues getting in on the action.
The latest in this is the National Basketball Association's announcement that it will be partnering with Take-Two Interactive to start its own eSports basketball league.
Today, the National Basketball Association announced plans to partner with publisher Take-Two Interactive for an official NBA 2K esports league, which led NBA commissioner Adam Silver to deliver this fantastic quote to the Wall Street Journal: “Think of eBulls against the eKnicks.”
The way this will work should be exactly as I imagined it would when I began playing the single player versions of sports games half a decade ago. And I'm sure many others considered how this might happen as well. Individual gamers would control individual custom players within an official league. It's like playing the MyPlayer version of the NBA2K series, except that you're playing in a league consisting of nothing but MyPlayers and competing online for teams, which might have their own owners, pay structures, etc.
The league, Silver explained, will operate just like the NBA: It’ll have a regular season, a playoff bracket, and a finals matchup. Teams of five players, each with his (or her?) own custom NBA 2K characters, will compete in a five-month season that starts in 2018. There’ll even be a draft, Silver said, although he also noted to the Wall Street Journal that none of the 30 NBA teams have fully committed to this esports league yet. (He expects around half of them to participate in the first year.)
It's not hard to imagine how this could balloon from this starting point. Owners of eSports NBA franchises might in the future fill a 12-man roster with gamers in this manner. They might hire coaches, fill out budgets for general managers that will be responsible for drafting and signing eAthletes, etc. It would be an eSports league that would mirror the real life sports league in most ways. The concept sounds really fun, though it remains to be seen how many NBA teams want to get on board.
What is clear, though, is that eSports isn't some fad ready to flame out quickly.
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Filed Under: basketball, esports
Companies: nba
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Competitive Civilization VI?
For now it is likely that the game of choice is NBA xxxx, but both of those titles are flirting with competitive formats and mods. While I would never think of Civ VI as competitive in its current iteration, the "no quitter"s made the mess called Civ V into a pretty good multiplayer game.
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Welcome to the NBA eSports expierence!
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No it won't, because there's an endless supply of stupid, fat, lazy gamers available to support it. More grist for the mill of the obesity and heart disease epidemic. Just sit right there on the couch stuffing junk food in your face and gaming instead of doing something unthinkable like running a mile or ten or -- OMG -- actually PLAYING a sport, working up a sweat, and doing something health-positive.
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If you'd ever seen even a short clip of a big esports event, you would have noticed that.
Moreover, if you had any knowledge of sports games, like NBA, Madden Football, or Fifa, you'd know that they aren't simulations of playing the actual game.
Yet you are ignorant and probably have an aol email address. The world passed you by. Join the AARP and deal with it.
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Impact on IP
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Re: Impact on IP
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great
No it won't, because there's an endless supply of stupid, fat, lazy gamers available to support it. More grist for the mill of the obesity and heart disease epidemic. Just sit right there on the couch stuffing junk food in your face and nba live mobile hack gaming instead of doing something unthinkable like running a mile or ten or -- OMG -- actually PLAYING a sport
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