Turner's ELEAGUE tournaments have marked the media company's first forays into esports, and both their Counter-Strike and Overwatch leagues feature first-person shooters. But during a press conference ahead of ELEAGUE's CS:GO Season 1 finals, Turner Sports' executive vice president and chief content officer Craig Barry said that the company's tournament series will not be exclusive to the FPS genre, though it was a conscious choice.

"Esports games like Dota 2 or League of Legends, it’s a much steeper learning curve, whereas Counter-Strike is a FPS; a sniper rifle is a sniper rifle and a pistol is a pistol," Barry said. "I’m simplifying it obviously, since understanding the economy in the game can be complicated, but ultimately Counter-Strike was the most digestible game for the widest audience.

"If you’re asking if we feel exclusive to FPS, the answer is no, but because we’re kinda new in the space, we wanted to make sure that we were approaching it for the widest audience as possible."

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Barry spoke further on the reasoning for choosing Overwatch as the game around their second ELEAGUE series, talking about the game's successful launch and building their partnership with Activision Blizzard.

"When Overwatch launched we all looked at each other and kinda said, 'Hey, we’d like to be in this space,'" he said. "We’d like to try this out, take our resources, pair them with Blizzard’s and see what we can bring to the community."

ELEAGUE's general manager Christina Alejandre chimed in on the choice of Overwatch and also spoke on where else ELEAGUE could possibly be heading next.

"Overwatch was a natural progression for us, but I would be remiss to say that we’re not looking at other franchises that aren’t first person shooters," she said. "You could see a fighting game up there, you could see a MOBA series up there."