Joe Rogan shocked after learning how esports attendance compares to UFC Joe Rogan Experience\/ValveWith pro-gaming becoming more and more mainstream with traditional sports networks like ESPN broadcasting esports, it\u2019s understandable that people would be shocked by its popularity. That includes folks like UFC commentator and podcast host Joe Rogan. During the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Quake creator John Carmack said he was impressed with the state of esports today with big prize pools, tournaments, organizations and leagues. \u201cI remember when we did the Quake Red Annihilation tournament. I gave away my first Ferrari as a grand prize,\u201d Carmack said. \u201cAnd I was thinking this is just the most over-the-top thing thing. This is going to be unmatched for years.\u201d (Timestamp 1:33 for mobile viewers) Of course, just like today\u2019s esports of Fortnite and DOTA, the prizes just keep one-upping each other. \u201cIt was only a year later that there was some other tournament with a $100,000 prize coming out. So, that went on much quicker than I expected and today you have the amazing celebrity of the top pro players. It\u2019s great to see the path that it\u2019s taken.\u201d Pro gamers, both retired and active are definitely quite like celebrities or athletes in the sports world. Former Overwatch League pro Felix \u2018xQc\u2019 Lengyel routinely streams to over 20,000 people on Twitch. \u201cIt\u2019s interesting to see they\u2019re now like legitimate sports stars and they make a tonne of money,\u201d the former Fear Factor host chimed in. \u201cWhereas if you were a kid 10 or 15 years ago, your parents would tell you that you\u2019re wasting your time. \u2018This is nonsense. Why you playing these games\u2019. But now you have a legitimate opportunity to be a professional game player.\u201d But Rogan had no idea what he was about to see put before his eyes. A graphic tweeted by Slasher showed the top-earning esports this year. As he soon learned, 16-year-old Fortnite World Cup winner Kyle \u2018Bugha\u2019 Giersdorf won more than Tiger Woods and the DOTA TI champions took home over $3 million each. it pays to play video games esports is love, esports is life pic.twitter.com\/g6qt2nJDg1 \u2014 Rod Breslau (@Slasher) August 25, 2019 \u201cWhat\u2019s DOTA?\u201d a shocked Rogan asked. \u201cI never even heard of it.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s a Valve game,\u201d Carmack answered and proceeded to explain the concept to the podcast host. \u201cPeople think oh The Super Bowl. The height of all competitive sports or whatever. A lot of these esports games, especially in South Korea dwarf these numbers,\u201d the game creator continued. Rogan then saw a photo of the DOTA The International from 2016 and had his mind blown. \u201cThat looks like 30,000 people! That looks like a UFC event.\u201d \u201cA lot bigger than UFC events,\u201d the Quake creator teased, knowing Rogan\u2019s work with the UFC. To his credit, Rogan was very accepting of esports growth and seemed to welcome it unlike so-called \u201cboomers\u201d who tweet about video games being shown on their TV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Rogan shocked after learning how esports attendance compares to UFC Joe Rogan Experience\/ValveWith pro-gaming becoming more and more mainstream with traditional sports networks like ESPN broadcasting esports, it\u2019s understandable that people would be shocked by its popularity. That includes folks like UFC commentator and podcast host Joe Rogan. During the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}