The rise of esports as a spectator phenomenon

In October 1972 at Stanford University, the first known video game competition took place. A handpicked list of the best Spacewar! players at the school were invited to watch and compete, and the lucky winner would take home a subscription to Rolling Stone magazine.

Stanford was the location for the event because its Artificial Intelligence Lab was one of the few places with enough advanced hardware to run the game. According to event organizer Stewart Brand, very few people in the world even knew that they could play games on computers; the first Pong cabinet would not be installed until several weeks after the Spacewar! tournament.