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People React to ESPN Airing eSports Tournament

"I don't have a damn clue what I'm watching, but they won't let me leave."

220 Comments

Following comments from ESPN president John Skipper last year that competitive gaming is not a sport (but rather a competition), the sports giant on Sunday evening aired two hours of gaming programming on ESPN 2. And the response was...enthusiastic to say the least.

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ESPN 2 broadcast the championship round of Blizzard's "Heroes of the Dorm" event, a collegiate tournament for the developer's free-to-play MOBA Heroes of the Storm.

The event took place in primetime, competing against the NBA playoffs and Major League Baseball, among other traditional professional sporting events.

The Heroes of the Dorm Grand Finals saw teams from Arizona State University and the University of California at Berkeley compete for a chance to win tuition money. The Golden Bears of UC Berkeley ended up winning.

As you might have guessed, people had a lot of things to say about it--some praised ESPN while others said games have no place on the network. Check out some of the mountains of tweets below, which include comments from fans, and even some ESPN personalities and sports writers.

This isn't the first time ESPN has aired video game programming, as the network also broadcast footage from the DOTA 2 tournament The International last year. What do you think of ESPN getting into gaming content? Let us know in the comments below.

Heroes of the Storm enters open beta on May 19, while the release date for the full game is June 2.

Via: Kotaku

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