
This news is huge!
[quote] Major League Gaming, the tournament league for professsional video game players, announced today it has cut a deal to use Electronic Arts‘ sports games in its major sponsored tournaments that are now drawing millions of viewers each month.
By hooking up with a huge game publisher like EA, MLG is broadening its audience and taking another step on the path toward proving that professional video game tournaments can be a money-generating spectator sport, even as some of its rivals have been driven out of business.
New York-based MLG will host the 2009 EA Sports Challenge series on the PlayStation 3 video game console, with sponsors including Best Buy and Sony. MLG has become the big professional video game players league in North America since it was founded in 2002. The company’s web site draws 9 million unique videos a month, and its video streams are watched by more than 600,000 people. The company also operates the GameBattles web site for amateur gamers.