Professional gamers draw big-name sponsors

updated 6:43 p.m. ET Sept. 13, 2005

NEW YORK - Is "frags per round" going to be the batting average of the 21st century?

Professional computer gamers certainly hope so.

Players of Counter Strike, a popular title in competition at the U.S. finals of the World Cyber Games last week, count their prowess in how many enemies they can shoot to pieces, or "fragment," in a frantic two-minute round of virtual gunplay.

Time and demographics, boosters say, argue for videogame tourneys becoming the next big spectator sport in the United States, where more than 108 million Americans now play computer games, according to the Yankee Group.

They're already garnering big-name sponsors.

"Kids in the early 1900s were playing baseball in dirt fields. Kids today are playing computer games" says Jason Lake, an Atlanta real-estate lawyer who owns two teams of pro gamers, totaling fourteen players, some of whom did battle last week.

For a non-gamer, the competition at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom can't have looked too exciting.

Pale young men crowded around computers on the floor as the cyberspace-based action unfolded on big-screen displays overhead, accompanied by a play-by-play announcer rattling off things like "Schwan's gonna be hiding behind a big box there, waiting for them to come up, and it's 7-0 for the counterterrorists on this map."

Only about 4,000 spectators showed up at the Hammerstein, organizers said, but more than 63,000 followed the games live on the Web.

Even more significantly, more than a million people around the world have tried to qualify for the final, to be held in Singapore in November. That's mostly a sign of the acceptance that computer gaming (or e-sports, as promoters like to call it) has gained in the rest of the world.

Just 40,000 of that million were Americans.

In South Korea, where the World Cyber Games is based, three cable channels broadcast competitive gaming around the clock and some of the country's approximately 200 professional gamers bask in rock star-like fame.

In the United States, "there are rock stars already, but the mass market doesn't know about them," says Robert Krakoff, president Razer Group, which makes computer mice and is a major sponsor of the games, along with Intel Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co.

MORE FROM GAMES

Games Section Front

10 best Xbox 360 games of 2009 Mom calls 911 over son's video-game habit 10 best PlayStation 3 games of 2009 Dungeons & Dragons fight: Hasbro vs. Atari Top 5 reasons to keep playing your PS2   'The Saboteur' is stylish but not strong 10 best Wii games of 2009   Game designers take aim at Tiger Fitness video games are reshaping medium November video game sales slump at retail Games Section Front   Add Games headlines to your news reader: