The First Esports Tournament Was Held at Stanford in 1972 — The Prize Was a Rolling Stone Subscription
On October 19, 1972, Stanford students competed in the 'Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics.' The winner got a year of Rolling Stone magazine. Today, esports prizes exceed $40 million per tournament.
Key Takeaways
- •1962: Spacewar! — the first multiplayer game — created at MIT
- •1972: Stanford's 'Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics' — first tournament ever
- •The prize: a one-year Rolling Stone magazine subscription
- •2026: esports audience exceeds 600 million viewers globally
Root Connection
The $1.8 billion esports industry traces directly to 24 students at Stanford's AI Lab in 1972, competing in Spacewar! for a Rolling Stone subscription.
Esports Prize Pool Growth
From a magazine subscription to $45M prize pools
Source: Esports Earnings
Timeline
Spacewar! created at MIT — the first multiplayer computer game
Stanford 'Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics' — first esports tournament
Atari Space Invaders Championship draws 10,000 participants
Red Annihilation Quake tournament — winner gets John Carmack's Ferrari
World Cyber Games and MLG founded — esports goes professional
League of Legends Season 1 World Championship — 1.6M viewers
Fortnite World Cup: 16-year-old Kyle 'Bugha' Giersdorf wins $3M
Global esports audience exceeds 600M — bigger than the Super Bowl
On October 19, 1972, about two dozen students gathered at Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory for a competition. They weren't there for a hackathon or a research demo. They were there to play a video game.
The game was Spacewar!, a two-player space combat game running on a PDP-10 computer. The event was called the "Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics," and it was sponsored by Rolling Stone magazine. Journalist Stewart Brand covered the event.
The prize for winning? A one-year subscription to Rolling Stone.
The prize for winning the first esports tournament in history was a year's subscription to Rolling Stone magazine. Today, a teenager can win $3 million playing Fortnite.
This was the first esports tournament in history. And it happened in 1972, decades before the internet, decades before gaming PCs, and half a century before the first million-dollar prize pool.
Spacewar! itself was revolutionary. Created in 1962 at MIT by Steve Russell and his colleagues, it was the first multiplayer computer game — two players controlling spaceships, firing torpedoes, battling around the gravity well of a central star. It spread to computer labs across America via the ARPANET (the precursor to the internet), making it arguably the first viral game.
The next major milestone came in 1980, when Atari held the Space Invaders Championship — the first large-scale gaming tournament. Over 10,000 people participated across the United States. The winner, Rebecca Heineman, went on to become a pioneering game developer.
In 1997, Dennis 'Thresh' Fong won John Carmack's Ferrari 328 GTS in a Quake tournament. It was the first significant material prize in competitive gaming.
Through the 1990s, competitive gaming grew in the shadows. LAN parties. Local tournaments. Arcade competitions. Then in 1997, something remarkable happened: the Red Annihilation Quake tournament. Dennis "Thresh" Fong defeated Tom "Entropy" Kimzey in the finals and won John Carmack's personal Ferrari 328 GTS. It was the first significant material prize in competitive gaming history.
The 2000s changed everything. Broadband internet enabled online multiplayer at scale. The World Cyber Games launched in 2000 as a kind of "Olympics of gaming." Major League Gaming (MLG) followed in 2002. StarCraft became a national sport in South Korea, with pro players treated like celebrities.
By 2011, League of Legends held its Season 1 World Championship with 1.6 million online viewers. In 2019, 16-year-old Kyle "Bugha" Giersdorf won $3 million at the Fortnite World Cup in front of a global audience.
Today, the esports industry generates over $1.8 billion annually. Tournament prize pools exceed $40 million. Professional players have coaches, nutritionists, and sports psychologists. Major universities offer esports scholarships.
All of it traces back to a room full of Stanford students in 1972, competing for a magazine subscription on a computer the size of a refrigerator.
The root of esports isn't Twitch or League of Legends. It's Spacewar! — a game created by MIT hackers who just wanted to see if computers could be fun.
How did this make you feel?
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