2003 · Counter-Strike, Warcraft III, Unreal Tournament 2003, Quake III Arena · Ligarena · Futuroscope, near Poitiers, France
A French company staged a multi-game PC tournament at a theme park in 2003 with 358 players from 37 countries — the start of one of the major international esports events of the decade.
The Electronic Sports World Cup was created by the French company Ligarena, and its first edition was held in 2003 at the Futuroscope theme park near Poitiers. It brought together 358 players from 37 countries to compete for prizes totalling €156,000. The programme reflected the PC competitive scene of the moment. Counter-Strike was the centrepiece team game, alongside Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, Unreal Tournament 2003 and Quake III Arena. The event also included a separate women's Counter-Strike competition, an early example of a major tournament giving female players a dedicated stage. The ESWC grew quickly. By 2006 it hosted 547 qualified participants from 53 countries, with a prize purse of $400,000. In 2008 it travelled to San Jose, California, as part of NVIDIA's NVISION 08 event. The organisation changed hands several times — becoming Games-Services in 2005 and later passing to Games-Solution and Oxent — and the event, later renamed the Esports World Convention, ran until 2018. Alongside the World Cyber Games and the Cyberathlete Professional League, it was one of the circuits that turned national LAN scenes into an international one.
The World Cyber Games had launched from South Korea in 2000. The ESWC gave Europe an international event of comparable scale, built on the strength of the French and wider European PC gaming scenes. Its mixture of team shooters and real-time strategy defined the mid-2000s idea of what an esports world championship looked like.