eSports
Esports are booming. And that has detectives worried
Esports’ rapid rise in popularity, scale and lucrative potential has detectives from Victoria Police’s sports integrity unit worried that young gamers are at risk of being targeted by organised crime syndicates.
- by Carla Jaeger
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Endeavour Group
Dan Murphy’s owner pours $3m into esports mega-venue
Australia’s biggest drinks retailer, Endeavour Group, is investing $3 million into Sydney’s newest esports, gaming centre as the $12 billion giant covets millennial and Gen Z customers
- by Jessica Yun
Japan opens first eSports high school in a bid to woo back dropouts
Students gathered around a whiteboard for a nearly scientific lecture about the relative merits of Street Fighter characters, then broke into groups to put the lesson into action.
- by Ben Dooley and Hisako Ueno
Melbourne friends claim responsibility for esport match fixing
Two Melbourne men have claimed responsibility for throwing an esports match after an online betting agency discovered suspicious behaviour made in the hours before the tournament.
- by Erin Pearson
Brisbane architects ‘build’ in Fortnite while eyeing bigger Games: the Olympics
Brisbane-based architects hoping to design a stadium for the 2032 Olympic Games have created a virtual sports arena to host potentially millions of competitors.
- by Jocelyn Garcia
Analysis
Video games
Can a video game be sport? Almost 7 million fans can’t be wrong
Two major video game tournaments held last weekend attracted a combined peak audience of 6,767,162. Esports have well and truly arrived.
- by James Lemon
The eSports publisher trying to ‘flip the media narrative on its head’
The online gaming industry is valued at more than US$250 billion. And young Aussie Riad Chikhani is among a group that has made money from the market.
- by Amelia McGuire
US, UK military teams to participate in Call of Duty tournament
The Call of Duty Endowment Bowl will match teams consisting of esports athletes from each branch of the US and UK militaries.
- by Mike Snider
Crows make it to Shanghai for eSports world championships
The Crows' eSports team, known as Legacy, completed two weeks of quarantine in Shanghai on Thursday.
- by Anthony Colangelo
Thanks to pandemic, chess is now a streaming obsession
From March through to August, people watched 41.2 million hours of chess on Twitch – four times as many hours as in the previous six months.
- by Kellen Browning
Telstra scores with esports play as Skillz prepares to list
Telstra's venture capital arm is looking at a big payday as mobile games maker Skillz gears up to land on the New York Stock Exchange at a valuation of $US3.5 billion.
- by Cara Waters