The largest professional video game league in the world, Kespa-sponsored Starcraft, in a joint statement with Blizzard, TV channel OnGameNet and media company GOMTV, announced their intent to switch entirely to Starcraft II from Starcraft I for future competitions.

Starcraft Proleague is a team league broadcast on South Korean television, and this announcement means that their competition will be rebroadcast in English, likely for free as with their League of Legends broadcast, and the current Starcraft I progamers will all switch to Starcraft II by next year. A hybrid league will run in the meantime from this month.

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=333959

The pro gaming scene is growing so fast now with SC2 and especially League of Legends drawing in ever more viewers. DOTA 2 will also likely be a big hit in the pro gaming arena, especially if Valve put up some more huge prise pools for future tournaments.

Esports for the win :) Thank you Blizzard and Valve for making it pretty much pop up over night. And thanks to whoever makes LoL.

Esports has been arround for years, slowly growing, and it has been huge in Korea for ages.

tho SC2 and LoL did give it a nice boost recently, and if Valve add some kind of stream veiwer straight into steam that would give it a huge boost. Youtube and paying for video views plus sites that allow live streaming which are the main reasons it has gotten so big, as they make it much more visable/accessible.

The fact you can tune in any moment of the day to an SC2 or LoL stream makes it easy to follow, and because of big sponsors getting involved they can now fly players around the world, and have a full broadcast setup with 2 commentators for every event. The production is approaching established sports in professionalism now.

As exposure grows so does the amount of sponsorship money that they get. And as there is more money so more people will be attracted and also more people that can afford to live off competing and spend more time training. 

I noticed that Black Ops 2 has a bit of a ESports push as well http://www.vg247.com/2012/05/02/black-ops-2-will-support-esports-scene-no-verdict-on-dedicated-servers/