What makes it a sport?

http://na.lolesports.com/articles/wildcard-all-stars-best-iwci

This article greatly informs about the current status of the LoL IWCI. It updates the reader on the current status of Brazilian star Revolta, informs about Thaldrin’s continued reliability in the top lane, and the amazing revival and comeback of the Bangkok Titans. It’s well written and easy to follow, while still using descriptive words that enlighten the reader familiar with League.  

But to an unfamiliar person, a brief glance at that link provides a lot of confusing information. In one quick read-over, a readers sees teams they’ve never heard of, people who look deadly serious, and words like prodigy, strategy, and e-sport. While this article may be talking about the League of Legends International Wildcard Invitational, to someone who’s never heard of that game, it looks like a load of confusion. Yet, this is the same game that has been spoken about by [Forbes](http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/02/04/league-of-legends-dj-sona-is-the-mona-lisa-of-microtransactions/) as having “...The Mona Lisa Of Microtransactions” So why is this internationally game that’s raved about as amazing ignored by most masses?

The best place to start is to explain what exactly League of Legends. League of Legends is an online MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) where two teams of five players each are tasked with destroying the enemy’s base. It launched in October of 2009, and has since grown to become an international game played by over [27 million people each day](http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/01/27/riots-league-of-legends-reveals-astonishing-27-million-daily-players-67-million-monthly/). It has professional leagues in North America, Europe, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Central America, and even Australia/Oceania. At the Season 3 World Championship for LoL, 32 million people watched the epic conclusion. [That’s more than the NBA finals](http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/05/league-of-legends-popularity-world-series-nba). So again, why is this seemingly awesome thing being ignored?

The answer to that may be because of the dreaded words “E-Sport” and “Gamer.” When people think of a sport, they think of football, soccer, basketball, and baseball. What makes League of Legends different? The main thought is perhaps that there’s no physicality to the e-sport genre. That however, is to ignore the most crucial parts to the game: strategy and reflexes. LoL players must make decisions in split-second time frames, where the wrong move means death for you, and possibly even your team. Of course you respawn after a brief delay, but you have anywhere from 10-60 seconds “off the field” in a game where 1-2 seconds is all it takes to change the entire outcome of a match. Players must be able to react within milliseconds of an enemy appearing, as LoL (Compared to hockey, football, baseball, cricket, rugby, basketball, and soccer) is the only game where you are not able to just turn around to see any opponents not currently in front of you. People can be invisible and out of sight, adding to the factors a player must be aware of. This is of course in addition to the factors including but not limited to: 

• _Your health, your opponents health, your position, their position, buffs on you and the enemy, amount of objectives (towers/dragons/barons/inhibitors etc.) taken, current resource statuses, amount of gold in both your and the enemy’s pocket, if any jungle camps are available, if you have smite to take full advantage of them, cooldowns on spells until you/your opponent can use them again, if the enemy is missing or not, and more! _

Of course, the argument that football and other sport players have to keep track of just as much is reasonable, but why does that not further legitimize the claim of e-sports? Is it still because of how League of Legends is played on a computer? Journalism made the jump from newspaper to online, what’s holding sports back from expanding there as well?