eSports league launches in Calgary with inaugural tournament at Telus Spark

If you play video games, you've probably heard of massive eSports tournaments.

But Calgary gamers say the city has yet to establish a firm eSports community capable of hosting these large scale events — and they're working to change that with the establishment of a new league. 

The league is called Calgary eSports League and aims to bring large competitive gaming events to the city, as well as assembling and supporting professional eSports teams and individuals in Calgary.

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For their inaugural year the league has teamed up with Telus Spark to host a series of competitive eSports events, with the first event taking place Tuesday.

Wes Nelson, an organizer with Calgary eSports League, said the first event will be an exhibition with lots of game options (including League of Legends, Super Smash Bros., and Tekken 7), more than 160 players and less of a focus on spectators. 

"We're trying to get the community and the gamers involved to a greater degree on this first one and just kind of bring all the games together, all the players together," he told the Homestretch.

Nelson said many people have put in a lot of hard work over decades to run these competitive eSports events, but often they focus on just one game at a time.

And, Nelson said there isn't a large enough competitive eSports community in Calgary yet to support events like that. 

"We haven't reached that critical mass," he said. "But eSports are taking off everywhere and it's going to take off here, so we thought it could be us that does it."

Nelson said not only are esports popular, but it's also a lucrative field — with some professional eSports atheletes racking in hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. 

He says Calgary doesn't have many players at that level yet, but he hopes with the creation of the Calgary eSports League, we'll start to see them emerge.

"We're coming at it from the grassroots end where we're trying to be more inclusive than exclusive, so we're not focusing on the elite players as much," he said. 

"But over the next few events we're gonna find out who those players are and we're gonna get to know them."

He said eventually there will be players that act as a draw to events and tournaments in Calgary.

"And then we can start building drama and that story as the community gets to know these guys and starts to care about whether they win or lose," he said.

Down the line, Nelson said they'd like to send those local teams to national and international events.

The exhibition tournament will be livestreamed on Twitch — a live video platform, similar to YouTube, where viewers can pay players they're watching game online — so those who can't make it in person can still watch.

Nelson said for gamers, watching professionals play on Twitch is like watching a professional sporting event. 

"You watch people playing football or basketball, you know that [in] basketball they're flying through the air, and … they defy gravity, and it's the same thing with sports," he said. 

"You're like, 'How did he execute that series of moves in that way?' or 'How did he know that this was going to happen?'" he said. 

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