The numbers are staggering (both prizes and number fans).  I was listening to the CBC yesterday morning and they were discussing scholarships that are being offered for gaming at Universities.  They were interviewing a coach for a gaming team who was a professional gamer.  The fact that people are earning money in a number of ways by gaming creates risk for some people who are vulnerable to developing a problem.  Many hours need to be spent practicing in order to become successful but like the NHL, very few will actually make it.  

Thanks for sharing this article, Beth. The popularity of e-sports seems to have grown exponentially over the last few years, drawing in more and more fans and cash prizes. For example, right here in Toronto taking place from October 26 to 28, is the EGLX video game expo. As part of the expo, there will be the live World Electronic Sports Games (WESG) Canadian Grand Finals. $150,000 can be won by the Canadian qualifiers, which will enable them to eventually compete for $5.5 million in the WESG Grand Finals held in China in March 2019.  You can find more information here.

The form and structure is like the Worl series of Poker, and even professional sports, with qualifying competitions and then the big competition.

I read this from the article: "The Olympic-style games will last over seven months and involve more than 65,000 players from over 190 countries"  

It makes me think about how many people play sports with the hope of becoming competitive, and how many people play esports in the hope of becoming competative and who has a better chance?

By comparison, there are 31 NHL teams who can only have 23 active players on their roster at any one time.  

In the NFL they can keep 53 players on their roster.  There are 32 teams.  

Of all the kids dreaming of becoming an NHL player, there are 713 active players per year and there are 1696 active NFL players per year.  

When kids say they want to be a professional  gamer, what can a parent's response be?