The start of the new year is here and with that a renewed esports calendar too – the big titles such as League of Legends have already seen a start to their own regular season play in individual regions, the big question has been around whether or not international play would be able to get up and running following disruptions throughout the year. The first big event of the year is set to get underway in February as IEM heads to Katowice, but it seems there may already be changes on the horizon as European COVID restrictions begin to change.
Despite the pandemic, 2024 was a very strong year all in all for esports as a whole, the cancellation of larger traditional sporting events led many to seek alternatives with esports being an obvious answer. More casual viewers were also given many more options as newer titles such as FIFA, NBA, and iRacing had started to bridge the gap between more traditional sporting and the growing virtual world by giving something a little more familiar, and with the growing support for esports betting through sites such as https://esportsbetting.site it had provided punters with somewhere to play whilst regular options weren’t available.
A big part of the esports scene however is within international competition, it brings the biggest teams in the world together on a regular basis and provides something different from more traditional options that are only able to offer international competition on rare occasions, if at all. Whilst online play will remain available it may be restricted to certain regional competition, which will cut a huge portion out of the calendar until some compromise can be met, and international competition does bring in a huge bulk of the more casual viewers too, and really does help the numbers.
The good thing about this in some way perhaps is that the impact won’t be as felt as largely as it is with other sporting events, the online events will continue to push esports forward, but some titles may not be able to make it through a period where international competition is the one big event of the year. It may also mix up the way the biggest games in the world sit too – newer titles like Valorant have come on to the scene during a difficult time and have somewhat been able to develop a solid online competitive scene during this period of time, where other games like DotA which rely on the one big event toward the end of the year which has been unable to take place, and may be unable to in 2024 too.
Biggest Tournaments in 2024
Besides the League of Legends, there are also many other famous titles with a huge fan base. When it comes to Fortnite, for example, many people who love this game were disappointed since it had to be cancelled in 2024. Also, no one is still sure whether there will be a world cup during this year. On the other side, there are already a lot of tournaments scheduled for CS: GO, and some of the most popular are Fun Spark Ulti, Dream Hack Masters, Blast, ESL One, ESL Pro, and more. The Overwatch will have some changes, but we expect that the league will start in April. However, big tournaments are still not certain.
Moreover, we expect that the Valorant championship will be a huge success this year. The most interesting part is that there are three main parts, Champions, Masters, and Challengers. Therefore, you can enjoy throughout the whole season while watching some of the best players reaching the top 16 teams and compete for the title of world champions in the end. The PUBG has also announced that there will be a global competition with a prize pool of near $15 million. The tournament will last until 2024, and we expect even more attendants than in 2024 when there were over 100,000 teams.
When it comes to the most recent competition that you can watch in the next few months, you should check the ESL in Los Angeles that is scheduled for March, One Sport in Jakarta during April, and Epicenter Major in May. The prize pool of the tournament in LA will be near $400,000, the DotA 2 in Jakarta will have $500,000 in prizes, while Epicenter has over $1 million.
Rise of Online Tournaments
The pandemic is having a huge effect on both standard and esports, but the esports industry managed to become even more popular during 2024. Also, betting on esports became very popular, especially when standard sports leagues were cancelled due to COVID-19. Therefore, it is not a surprise that many people became interested in starting their career as professional gamers. There are some websites where you can easily start playing at some basic tournaments and try to reach some more popular competition.
You can try websites like Toornament.com, UMGaming, Mogul.gg, and several other options where you can choose all sorts of popular video games. When it comes to prizes, winning some tournaments in lower ranks can bring you a few hundred dollars. However, after you improve your rank the prizes could go over $10,000.
Conclusion
The gaming industry is one of the rare that managed to grow during 2024 despite the pandemic, and the main reason is that people had much more spare time to enjoy streams of their favourite titles. Also, all of the most popular tournaments are already scheduled for this year, but it is not determined yet whether there will be a public audience or not. On the other side, the number of online competitions that you can play from home is also on the rise.
