How technology is transforming lives of youngsters
By Yao Yao | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2017-12-27 14:10
E-sports has great development potential
![](http://img2.chinadaily.com.cn/images/201712/27/5a434528a31008cfb2e8bf9f.jpeg)
It's time to change your attitude to playing online games, due to the professionalism and popularity of e-sports nowadays.
E-sports was listed by the General Administration of Sport of China as the 99th athletic event in 2003.
And there were 97 million e-sports fans across China and the total production value of e-sports related industries exceeded 50 billion yuan, according to Xinhua.
In 2016, Ministry of Education listed e-sports athletics and management as a supplementary major for college education.
An e-sports player named Malaxiangguo apologized on Twitter-like Sina Weibo after the team he belonged to failed during the semi-final at 2017 League of Legends World Championship on Oct 28, 2017. And the move was once one of the most searched terms on the website.
Besides, more than 104.68 million people watched the semi-final game broadcast, showed by the data of Esports Charts.
It's reported that there are nearly 70 million e-sports core audience and more than 500 million game players, but only around 50,000 professional e-sports players in China.
So e-sports still has a long way to go.