Packed stadiums and millions of viewers online - People watching other people playing video games has become a pretty big deal.

It was pretty impressive when the League of Legends World Series last year filled a stadium used for a football world cup with 40,000 fans... and that's before you consider the 27 million people who watched online.

Yep, 27 million viewers, more than the population of Australia. Numbers like that show how eSports, or electronic sports, has exploded in recent years.

"eSports is growing rapidy and is the process of seeping in to mainstream society," according to Daniel Ringland, Riot Games' eSports manager for Oceania.

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It really is cracking the mainstream too, last month an Australian gambling website announced it would take bets on some of these competitions and in the last year games have been broadcast on TV.

This isn't a new phenomenon though, South Korea have been doing it for decades and started televising it around 2000.

eSports' biggest communities are in South Korea and China, but North America and Europe are catching up and bringing some healthy competition.

There's big money at stake in these competitions. One game, Defence of the Ancients, had a prize pool of over $18 million for it's 2015 international tournament.

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Whatsapp eSports players in the League of Legends Game Arena.

Chad 'Spunj' Burchill from Perth is part of the Vox Eminor Counterstrike team. Earlier this year they competed at the ELS One competition in Poland.

"The stadium they had there, it was just this massive stadium and it was packed with people. The home crowd were playing and it was insane. You don't even see that kinda stuff with big sporting events," Spunj says.

But potential players beware, eSports isn't what you would consider a casual gaming experience.

"I'm the in game leader, I call what strategies we're going to do and I have to micromanage all the players and think about what the other team is going to do, so for me, mine is a very stressful role."

The skills of players like Spunj don't stay sharp by themselves, there's a lot of training that goes into getting pro.

"We're probably looking at about four to five hours a day. The other teams, the professional teams around the world, they're treating it like a proper job, they're doing eight plus hours a day."