When Michael Francisco and two friends founded TorontoTopTiers ten years ago, Canada wasn’t even on the map for fighting game competitions. It was separate factions of different fighting games.

“That was the problem. Two friends and I were like, ‘there’s no place you can search in Toronto that shows all of them. You have to do them one by one.’ So, us three decided to start our own thing to bring them all together and elevate the Toronto scene.” It wasn’t easy. The organization was completely grassroots with the friends managing and producing everything together.

A decade later, TorontoTopTiers is now the premier organization and go-to hub for information on fighting game competitions in Toronto. They host online tournaments regularly on Twitch and run their yearly Toryuken tournaments. Winners qualify towards competing in Evolution Championship Series aka EVO, the biggest fighting game tournament in the world.

The rise in profile mirrors the growth of competitive gaming in general. Esports has had a massive rise to the top since the early days of gaming. But where did it all begin?

The origins of competitive gaming can be traced as far back as the Spacewar Olympics of 1972. Widely considered the first video game tournament, the competition was a small gathering of students in the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab in Los Altos, California. It was one of the few places that had technology that could run the game Spacewar!. The prize for that tournament was a subscription to Rolling Stone — a far cry from the prize pools of millions today.

It’s argued that the first large scale gaming tournament was The Space Invaders Championship held in 1980. It was run by game company Atari and brought over 10,000 contestants from across the United States to New York.

A year later, Walter Day would go on to establish the gaming record-keeping organization, Twin Galaxies. The company was responsible for promoting video games and publishing records like those in the Guinness Book of World Records. Twin Galaxies would then go on to run tournaments of their own, including the Video Game Masters Tournament.

Day later established the very first esports team, the U.S. National Video Game Team, in 1983. The team participated in several tournaments including the Video Game Masters Tournament.

In the early 90s, other genres of games emerged in the competitive scene: fighting games, First Person Shooters (FPS), and racing games. The scene became more diversified and created the need for distinct categories in competition.

Console game makers also entered the fray with Nintendo holding its first Nintendo World Championships tournament in 1990. The tournament toured across the States and held its finals in California.

The fighting-game tournament that would be king also launched in this period. Evolution Championship Series (EVO) began in 1996 and was known as B3: Battle By The Bay at the time.

The technological boom of the early 2000’s resulted in coverage of esports on a global scale.

While gaming tournaments had been featured on TV previously, tournaments were getting far more mainstream coverage with dedicated channels emerging in South Korea such as Ongamenet and MBCGame. In the United States, ESPN hosted the Madden NFL competition Madden Nation.

Real Time Strategy games or RTS games such as Starcraft, Warcraft III and the Starcraft mod Defense of the Ancients (DotA) rose in prominence, entering the competitive scene.

The prize pools for tournaments were also increasing exponentially with some prizes reaching as high as $1 million USD. This is when large companies started taking interest in sponsorship.

Internet streaming became an important platform for the growing esports presence in this era. In 2011, the streaming platform Twitch came into existence allowing esports competitions to be broadcast over the internet. This gave people much more access to watch than before and exposed a new audience to the genre.

Physical esports tournaments reached the level of concerts. The Season 2 League of Legends World Championship at the Staples Center sold out completely in 2013

And PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) entered the competitive arena, bringing battle royale games to the competitive level.

The biggest competitive tournaments in the world are now household names: EVO, the all-encompassing fighting game tournament, the Fortnite World Cup, the League of Legends World Championship (Worlds), and the DotA 2 competition The International (TI).

EVO started as a humble tournament in California and has now grown to become the longest-running fighting game event with prize pools reaching over $100,000 USD annually.

The Fortnite World Cup is an annual event that boasts prize pools of almost $10 million USD, with the biggest solo prizes for individual winners by far at $3 million USD.

The most popular tournament on this list goes to the League of Legends World Championship. Worlds brings in almost 4 million viewers annually and includes an amazing showcase of entertainment comparable to a Super Bowl half-time show. The prize pools reach close to $7 million USD for the winners.

The DotA 2 tournament “The International” (TI) brings the biggest money to the table with a collective prize pool of over $35 million USD for the winners.

A report estimates that in 2020, there were almost 2 billion people aware of esports, with a projection of 300 million regular viewers in 2022.

The ongoing pandemic has further elevated the state of esports as it doesn’t have the restrictions of traditional sports and can continue safely in the current health climate. Traditional sports networks have begun featuring esports, bringing the competitions to the mainstream. ESPN even created an entire day of programming dedicated to esports – ESPN Esports Day – last April. Families across the States watched Madden NFL20, Rocket League, and NBA 2K20 competitions on their television screens

Reflecting on the evolution of the competitive gaming scene, Toryuken co-founder Francisco is amazed at the progress.

“We are super esports right now. It’s grown so much. We have so many tournaments that I honestly don’t know where it came from. […] The fact that we have so many of these events now, like esports and so many hosted events for fighting games is good. It’s crazy how big our gaming community has become.”