With 2.2 billion fans worldwide and $124 billion in revenue, professional sports is big business. But ask Mike Sepso, senior vice president of Activision Blizzard Media Networks, and he says that’s nothing compared to the potential of e-sports. By 2017 alone, Sepso says, there will be 2.1 billion gamers on the planet, who between them will generate more than $107 billion in revenue–and just keep climbing from there.

The key word here, though, is “potential.” Right now, the e-sports market is worth $463 million–small potatoes compared to what a regular professional sports league generates (like the MLB’s $9 billion in annual revenue). There’s just not a lot of excitement around e-sports right now. That’s something Activision Blizzard is trying to correct with EVE (Event Viewing Experience), an e-sports broadcasting platform that aims to give gamers the equivalent of what ESPN gives to sports nuts.

Unpacking The E-Sports Ecosystem

E-sports, otherwise known as professional gaming, is a purely digital form of athletics in which teams of video game players compete with each other in organized league play. E-sports has been around almost as long as gaming: Atari held a Space Invaders Championship all the way back in 1980. In the late ’90s, games like Quake and Starcraft became so popular that e-sports became formalized, eventually leading to the creation of the first e-sports league, Major League Gaming–which Sepso cofounded. These days, there are hundreds of competitions each year, where thousands of e-sports athletes compete in dozens of games for prize jackpots that can sometimes reach the high six figures. These competitions, in turn, are sponsored by gaming publishers and hardware markers, which treat the streaming video footage of these matches as a form of publicity.

The E-Sports Learning Curve

Although there are plenty of places to watch e-sports online, like YouTube or Twitch, the problem EVE is trying to solve is a complicated one. Viewers’ appreciation of sports is going to ultimately be dictated by their knowledge of the significance of what’s happening: Watching a game of baseball isn’t very exciting if you don’t know why all those fat guys with mullets are running around that diamond. But in the case of traditional sports, like baseball or football or hockey or basketball, a hundred years of cultural osmosis guarantees there’s probably someone in the same room with you who can explain what is happening, and why it’s important.

That’s not the case with e-sports. Even though the top players use a lot of skills that can be transferred across different titles, the popular games change rapidly, depending on what new games are published in a given year, what publishers are sponsoring a tournament. An e-sports player might be playing Counterstrike one day, Modern Warfare the next, and Overwatch the day after that, with each game having its own rules, goals, and levels. Add in different gameplay modes and variants–there’s a huge difference between Team Deathmatch, King of the Hill, and Capture the Flag– and e-sports broadcasters have to spend all of their time explaining the rules of the game to the people watching at home.

What People Really Want Is The Drama

But broadcasters’ time would be better spent on narratives, insists Sepso. “Most people don’t really follow sports because of the technical capabilities of the players, or the strategy of the coaches,” he says. “They follow drama and storyline, heroes and villains. We love the story of sports.” Stuff like: Will Kevin Durant carry the Warriors to next year’s NBA championships? Is Kobe Bryant really retired or will he come back? Will Rex Ryan finally throw over the regime of Bill Belichick?

And so on. That story is something sports broadcasters only have the bandwidth to convey because they’re not spending all their time explaining the significance of what just happened in the game: The graphic overlays do most of the heavy lifting for them, keeping the viewer informed of data like player scores, team location, and stats. If it’s on the screen, it’s important.