ELeague is trying to make esports sexy for TV.
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Turner’s ELeague takes esports to the mainstream

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 14 min

Craig Barry is one of the esports true believers at Turner Sports. The executive vice president and chief content officer at Turner is one of the people running ELeague, the esports competition that is broadcast on TBS on television, as well as online.

Television is one of the last places you’d expect to find young millennials these days. But ELeague has drawn more than 9 million young viewers to TBS, and that means that esports is on the verge of becoming a mainstream pastime, just like traditional sports. We talked with Barry about Turner’s experience so far in building an audience and attracting sponsors and advertisers for the league.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.