And the ESPN of eSports is… ESPN
LOL and DOTA join NFL, NBA and NHL coverage
Activision big cheese Bobby Kotick wanted Major League Gaming to become ‘the ESPN of eSports’ when his company bought it last year. Sorry, Bobby – looks like ESPN just beat you to it.
The US sports giant launched a dedicated eSports channel on its website (and a Twitter account to go with it) last night.
It’s not just a flash in the pan, either; a team of writers with eSports backgrounds are on board. Fans can expect interviews with players, behind-the-screens coverage and post-season report cards. Basically everything you’d get from any other ESPN channel, only about keyboard warriers and controller jockeys.
Coverage so far is firmly focused on MOBAs like League of Legends and DOTA 2, card battler Hearthstone and Halo 5: Guardians.
This should eventually branch out quickly to cover other genres though: a detailed eSports calendar is quickly filling up with entries for Korean StarCraft leagues, Counter Strike tournaments and the fighting game olympics that is EVO 2016.
ESPN eSports is a big turnaround for the company, only five months after CEO John Skipper dropped a knowledge bomb saying "It’s not a sport".
Don’t expect Monday Night Counter Strike to replace Monday Night football any time soon, either. When EPSN2 aired a Heroes of the Storm tournament last year, vocal sports fans were up in arms about it on Twitter before the first Nexus could fall.
Whatever ESPN has planned for the future, this week’s launch is just in time to cover North America’s League of Legends Championship series, which kicks off tomorrow.
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Tom Morgan-Freelander
Deputy Editor 
