It would appear that the folks at the Cyberathelete Professional League have been busy.
According to a BBC report, the CPL and satellite television provider, DirecTV, have entered into an agreement in which DirecTV has acquired broadcast rights to all CPL events, and will immediately set about broadcasting the league’s Winter Championships, held in December.
I’m amusing myself greatly by imagining a Madden NFL competition broadcast with Madden as commentator. Yeah, it’s unlikely, but that’s kind of the point of irony. Look it up.
For those of you who (like Angel Munoz) dream of a world in which gaming becomes the next great professional sport, this is probably the best news you’ll hear all week. DirecTV’s 15+ million subscribers, plus it’s parent corporation, News Corp’s marketing muscle, plus the CPL’s achievement of being the first professional gaming organization to acquire “pizza delivery options” equal big, big things for the “sport” of gaming in the years to come.
For those of you who (like me) cannot possibly fathom why watching a televised video game competition would be preferable to … well anything else, I suppose this will give you just one channel to breeze past with a smirk on those lazy Sunday afternoons. Hazy memories of watching Dick Weber dominate the PBA Tour are flooding back to me now, book ended between boredom with Donkey Kong Jr. on one end, and the realization that no matter how boring climbing vines for hours on end may be, watching grown men bowl is far worse on the other.
You have to hand it to the pro gaming guys, though. Turning an electronic pastime which has traditionally had all the sexiness of a fat guy sitting in front of a computer into a world-renowned professional sport is no easy task. The merits of such an endeavor aside, one has to be impressed by their tenacity.
