{"id":85621,"date":"2016-01-27T13:30:45","date_gmt":"2016-01-27T11:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=85621"},"modified":"2016-01-27T13:39:26","modified_gmt":"2016-01-27T11:39:26","slug":"espn-recognises-halo-5-as-an-extreme-sport-invites-teams-to-x-games-aspen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/business\/85621-espn-recognises-halo-5-as-an-extreme-sport-invites-teams-to-x-games-aspen","title":{"rendered":"ESPN recognises Halo 5 as an extreme sport: invites teams to X Games Aspen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We hope you\u2019ll forgive us for not noticing this little titbit of news earlier, especially after <a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/news\/85597-in-2016-the-esports-market-is-expected-to-grow-to-463-million.html\" target=\"_blank\">yesterday\u2019s eSports piece<\/a>. Whoops.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, it\u2019s no less exciting to hear that ESPN now considers <em>Halo 5: Guardians<\/em> an extreme sport, having invited eight teams to take part in this year\u2019s X Games Aspen.<\/p>\n<p>From January 28<sup>th<\/sup> to the 31<sup>st<\/sup>, the Halo World Championship Tour: X Games Aspen Invitational 2016 will pit eight teams against one another for a share of the $30,000 prize pool \u2013 R492,000 to you and us.<\/p>\n<p>For six North American and two European teams, it\u2019s a fairly historic event. That\u2019s not to say that videogames are now a sport because ESPN said so, we\u2019ve though eSports should have been considered legitimate sports for some time now, but it\u2019s proof that eSports have become too difficult to ignore \u2013 something <a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/news\/85597-in-2016-the-esports-market-is-expected-to-grow-to-463-million.html\" target=\"_blank\">yesterday\u2019s piece<\/a> will reiterate.<\/p>\n<p>The teams taking part are:<\/p>\n<p>\u00b7 Epsilon eSports (UK)<br \/>\n\u00b7 PENTA Sports (Germany)<br \/>\n\u00b7 Team Allegiance<br \/>\n\u00b7 CLG<br \/>\n\u00b7 Evil Geniuses<br \/>\n\u00b7 Leftovers<br \/>\n\u00b7 Dream Team<br \/>\n\u00b7 Team Liquid<\/p>\n<p>ESPN\u2019s stance on eSports is hardly surprising given their recent addition of a dedicated <a href=\"http:\/\/espn.go.com\/esports\/\" target=\"_blank\">eSports page<\/a>, or that Twitch regularly gives ESPN a run for its money.<\/p>\n<p>At one point, ESPN\u2019s president claimed that <a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/news\/68566-esports-is-not-a-sport.html\" target=\"_blank\">they had no plans to incorporate eSports coverage into ESPN<\/a>, but that won\u2019t stop us nerds.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h4><strong>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/espn.go.com\/esports\/story\/_\/id\/14620400\/x-games-aspen-invitational\" target=\"_blank\">ESPN<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/news\/85497-r1000000-cash-prizes-for-new-telkom-dgl-masters.html\">R1,000,000 cash prizes for new Telkom DGL Masters<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/features\/80707-just-how-big-has-esports-become.html\">Just how big has eSports become?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ESPN now considers Halo 5: Guardians an extreme sport, having invited eight teams to take part in this year\u2019s X Games Aspen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":85623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17069,12920,1611,17065,17063,1969,17067],"class_list":["post-85621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-aspen","tag-espn","tag-esports","tag-extreme-sport","tag-hao-5-guardians","tag-news-2","tag-x-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}