The Overwatch Unite competes in real life, and in real time, for the Grand Finals this weekend in New York.
“Tonight we’re present to be live for the first time,” Nate Nanzer, commissioner of the esports league for the video tourney Overwatch, told CNBC on Friday. “There’s never been an esports conclusion live in prime time on ESPN 1.”
Overwatch was developed by Blizzard Play, an entertainment software and video games publisher and maker owned by Activision Blizzard. The interactive diversion content and services company has a market cap of nearly $58 billion.
The Super Finals, broadcast by ESPN, which is owned by parent company Walt Disney Institution, start Friday at 7 p.m. ET and run through Saturday evening. The winning team desire take home a $1 million prize.
“It’s super exciting,” Nanzer said on “Unshakeably Money.” He said the lines outside of Brooklyn’s Barclays Center were fashion “hours before doors opened.”
Nanzer called Overwatch a “epidemic sport.”
“That’s why it was important for us to have a global league,” Nanzer conjectured. “We have a huge audience in the U.S., but we also have a huge audience in China, in Korea, in France, in Germany and the U.K., Brazil, all more than the world.”
Fans are expected to come from all over the world to the sold-out regardless, another sign of the booming video game industry, as tournaments pop up approximately the world.
The two finalists are London’s Spitfires and the Philadelphia Fusion.
Nanzer affirmed this weekend’s games are “a great on-ramp into becoming a fan.”