MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- It's called "esports." Competitive sports done entirely through video games. In the past few years, it has exploded in popularity across the world.
Thursday, April 15, State Rep. Tip McGuire of Kenosha and Kalan Haywood of Milwaukee held an informal meeting to promote investment of the sport here in Wisconsin, and their new legislation to help do so.
"He and I introduced legislation to create a grant program for our schools to be able to offer this as a club or a sport activity for students, and when we did that we discovered not everyone is familiar with esports," said Mcguire.
At the virtual meeting, some notable faces included Milwaukee Bucks President Peter Feigin, Steve Baas from the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, and former Green Bay Packers running back Ahman Green.
Green is actually the esports coach for Lakeland University, which has been described as one of the leaders in the esports movement.
"It started with the students meeting once a month, two of the students from that group went to the administrators... the students knew other universities had esports programs, and that some of the high schools in Wisconsin had esports programs," Green said. "...asked them hey can we bring an esports program to Lakeland and that's basically how it started."
An interesting fact: the Milwaukee Bucks have a professional esports team called Bucks Gaming through the NBA's 2K League.
