This weekend, 20,000 or so screaming fans will pack into the Anaheim Convention Center to watch the best gamers around the world compete for thousands of dollars at Major League Gaming's Spring Championship. But that's only a fraction of the number of people who will watch the tournament unfold online.

This is like the Super Bowl for gamers, except it happens four times a year. The Spring Championship will pit the best teams in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, League of Legends and StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm against their rivals for a three-day long showdown that culminates in a $100,000 prize and months of bragging rights. There will undoubtedly be Cinderella stories and underdogs to root for, and nail-biting final matches.

If it seems like these are more sports cliches than you'd expect for a gaming match, it's because Major League Gaming has modeled itself after both the best sports television networks and sports leagues. It organizes a league of teams with the best players, sets rules for their competition and then broadcasts the matches to an engrossed online audience.

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Between the four larger tournaments, Major League Gaming focuses on keeping its audience entertained by providing daily live content for them to watch, as well as hooking them in to its own competitive gaming platform where they can rank themselves against the pros. It's a complete package that supports a lifestyle for its hardcore gamer audience, and one they are happy to plug in to.

The ESPN of E-Sports

Chris Puckett started out as a professional gamer who lived that kind of lifestyle. Now he creates shows five days a week as as MLG's executive producer, focusing on competitive Call of Duty play. Puckett spends each day helping to fill between six and seven hours of live programming streamed to fans on MajorLeagueGaming.com.

Puckett has cribbed much of what he does from sports. MLG had a relationship with ESPN from 2006 to 2011, and MLG's cofounder and president Mike Sepso said that they were given the benefit of ESPN and its producers' collective knowledge.

"The team has experience with the best sports television producers in the world, who come from multiple companies and cover multiple sports. That's what we've been able to draw out of the sports world and translate to our world," Sepso says. "Chris didn't go to school to become a broadcast guy. He got to work with some broadcasters and producers in the sports world for the past seven or eight years, and that's why we are so good at doing that."

Of course, there is a benefit to having your entire sports league in-house. Puckett coordinates with top Call of Duty teams that compete in MLG to help him produce daily content. That usually means he'll set up matches between popular teams, bring in casters — commentators whose job it is to explain the match — and then add the kinds of graphics and polish that you'd expect from SportsCenter.

Viewers will be treated to tricks of the trade pioneered by sports broadcasters, including two-minute breakdowns of strategy during heated matches, or even live instant replay during games. Puckett said much of these capabilities have only come around as streaming and capturing technology for gaming have recently improved.

Broadcasting a game is a different technical beast than a live sporting match, and much of the challenges lie in how to present the first-person view of eight different players during a match so fans can follow the action. There are several elements on screen to help, including a mini-map that tracks player movement and a list of the active players, what team they're on and the number of kills they've achieved.

"We've also trained the audience to be familiar with the locations inside the maps, so they recognize where players are. With that, it allows us to switch to more cameras, and always catch the most exciting action," Puckett explains.

Live matches are the most popular type of programming. MLG uses them to get viewers invested in the storylines of teams in the lead-up to the championship, and much of what Puckett decides to feature is based around telling a good story for fans. But fans are equally fascinated by strategy shows, where players explain how they play.

"With Call of Duty, a lot of the younger viewers will want to get information on strategy from the pros and see what techniques they are using," Puckett says. "I'll get two of the top teams to face off in the best of seven or 11 games. I'll ask them after what their team did right and wrong. The players give very candid feedback and talk openly and honestly about their strategy, and it's a way for younger players to learn and improve."

Live matches for other popular games like StarCraft 2 have their own takes on the strategy formula, each aimed at being relatable to fans, and also giving them heroes in the sport to admire.

Getting Advertisers Involved

MLG also produces softer shows for their network and YouTube, including content that cribs from reality shows on TLC. In the Dr Pepper Ultimate Gaming House show, now in its fifth season, fans who apply are rewarded with a makeover of their gaming space, complete with serious Dr Pepper product placement.

Dr Pepper is a huge supporter of Major League Gaming, sponsoring everything from this show to pre-game coverage streamed from the championship tournaments. It's found a solid home, along with other sponsors, at MLG, particularly because the platform boasts very high engagement from its fans.

"People that will tune in to watch the championship at Anaheim will watch for about three hours, more than double than what people watch during the Super Bowl," Sepso says. "MLG's live broadcasts are more than two times more engaging than the next most engaging property, and because we have such dedicated fans and such tremendous growth year over year — about 300%."

Sepso says the fans aren't turned off by the casual brand endorsements because they see them as something that helps supports the championship, which they are very passionate about.

"It drives our fans to really support the advertisers that support something they love," Sepso says. "What some of our advertisers have learned is that they get their return on investment through that high level of engagement and passion."

Improving Competitive Gaming

Advertisers aren't the only ones to notice the spending power of passionate games. Sepso says that in the past two or three years, game publishers like Warner Bros. Interactive and Sony Entertainment Online have approached the company in order to get feedback on how to improve the multiplayer experience. Sepso jokes that before, companies wouldn't give them the time of day, and much of this disruption has to do with free-to-play games becoming a dominant force on the PC.

The most obvious example of this is League of Legends, which has become the most popular competitive game in the world in the last two years because of wide adoption from the free-to-play model, and because creator Riot Games constructed a title directly around the multiplayer experience. The popular title has almost 40 million active players, and has posted numbers as high as 5 million active at one time.

"That game is a juggernaut. The live audience and broadcast audience will be significantly bigger than StarCraft, and StarCraft has 12 to 14 years of esports history behind it," Sepso says. "Anecdotally, we see a major shift where the publishers are responding to the consumer's want for online competitive play and new business models. At the end of the day, the consumer wins. People will naturally go to the platform that has the best multiplayer experience, the most balanced game and the place where they can have fun."

To provide an additional service to both players and game publishers, Major League Gaming has developed MLG Play, an integrated API that gives gamers of any skill level a consistent profile associated with their games, while also providing data to developers and publishers about what players are doing. The MLG Play profile allows amateur and professional players to see their ranks in international ladders, and offers incentive to improve.

"This data tracks all of the tournaments that lead up to our qualifying events. These players have the same profiles, so it's a really easy way to seek out where you stand against the world of professional and amateur gamers," Sepso says. "The road to professional circuit starts at MLGPlay, and you build your way up from there."

For those with professional aspirations or just looking to tune in, Major League Gaming's Spring Championship begins Friday night at 5 p.m. PT/8 p.m. ET. There are three days of competition (here's the full schedule) as teams battle each other in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm and League of Legends tournaments. Fans can watch for free on MLG's website, or pay to subscribe for 1080p, ad-free experience on its Twitch channel.

Photos courtesy Major League Gaming