Numbers Game

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What does winning a video game world championship get you? If the game is League of Legends, it's $1 million, which is what a South Korean team walked away with when it beat its closest competitor, another team from South Korea, in the playoffs in Berlin (http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34698639). With such sums at stake and more on the horizon as gaming's popularity grows (the finals attracted an audience of 15,000), it's getting serious. So far, South Korea seems to be the center of the e-sports world. Teams train and live together. They have coaches. Games are broadcast on TV and live-streamed, in both Korean and English. They're like boy bands in that the great majority of the players are men in their early 20s and many, if not most, of their fans are young girls who shower them with gifts and wait to take selfies with them after their competitions. But like athletes in the more traditional sports, they also risk physical injury ~ and undergo surgery to ensure they can stay in the game (story, video): http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32996009