After looking at Korea, we now look into our realms. Because where can we better understand the culture than in our own region? This time we look at the whole thing – in which country which eSport title is played most often and where do the players earn the most money. In the first part we dedicate ourselves to the history of European eSports and this will amaze many of you.

In contrast to typical German sports, eSports continue to play a very small role in our society. But Europe has also produced one of the best-known companies in eSports.

The early years

The history of European and predominantly German eSports is very difficult to reconstruct. While the first offline tournaments were held in America in 1972 with the game “Pong”, eSports in Germany began relatively late. There were always a few smaller clans, but it wasn’t until 1996 that the first clans were founded, and their success can still be seen today.

At that time, “Orcana”, “SK Gaming” and “pod virtual gaming” were the first teams in Germany to play Quake professionally. All this happened in the years 1996-98, when the games “Quake” and “Doom” were the titles par excellence to run eSport. Even greater importance was attached to eSport in Germany with the release of the online shooter “Counter-Strike“. The game from Valve was one of the main reasons why eSport became so big in Europe and other games managed to inspire so many people.

The various leagues also played a major role in the history of Europe: towards the end of the 1990s, the first major leagues were founded, most of which were not only active at national level. This included, for example, the German Clan League.

Electronic Sports League

It is probably the best-known league in eSports. The DeCl, or all of you better known as ESL. In 1997 Ralf Reichert founded the “DeCl” and thus laid the foundation for the most successful and largest league of its kind. Acer sat down with Ralf Reichert to talk about ESL, SK and eSport in general.

In 2000 the name was changed to ESL – Electronic Sports League. At the end of 2013, it comprised 4 million registered members and 950 thousand teams. Meanwhile ESL has several tournaments on national and international level.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator