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48 free Esports trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Esports began with Stanford students playing Spacewar! for a Rolling Stone subscription in 1972 and now fills stadiums, hands out eight-figure prize pools and is heading to an Olympic Esports Games. In between came Space Invaders and Twin Galaxies, Quake's Red Annihilation and its Ferrari, Korean StarCraft on television, the Cyberathlete Professional League, Twitch, and the modern giants: League of Legends Worlds, Dota 2's The International, Counter-Strike Majors, Evo, the Fortnite World Cup and the Esports World Cup in Riyadh. This quiz spans all of it. There are questions on the tournaments and their records, the players (Faker, s1mple, Daigo, N0tail, Bugha, Ninja), the organizations (T1, OG, Team Liquid, FaZe, Fnatic, Astralis, Ninjas in Pyjamas), the leagues that rose and fell like Overwatch League, and the milestones on the way to the Asian Games and the Olympics. Some are easy for anyone who watches; others are for people who remember Justin.tv. Every answer is checked against a reference source and each question links to where the fact was confirmed.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The earliest known video game competition, held at Stanford in October 1972, was played on which game?
Spacewar!
Spacewar!, the 1962 PDP-1 game, was the contest at the 'Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics' at Stanford's AI lab; Bruce Baumgart won the five-player free-for-all.
Q 02What was the grand prize at the 1972 Stanford video game tournament?
A Rolling Stone subscription
A Rolling Stone subscription, for a year; the magazine's Stewart Brand covered the event, one of the first mainstream articles on gaming culture.
Q 03Which 1980 Atari event, with over 10,000 entrants, was the first big video game competition?
The Space Invaders Championship
The Space Invaders Championship drew more than 10,000 players to regional finals across the US; its winner, Rebecca Heineman, later co-founded the developer Interplay.
Q 04Which high-score record-keeping organization did Iowa arcade owner Walter Day found?
Twin Galaxies
Twin Galaxies began as Day's Ottumwa, Iowa arcade, whose scoreboard became the official high-score registry; it supplied records to Guinness and formed the U.S. National Video Game Team in 1983.
Q 05Which 1991 game popularized head-to-head tournament play over high-score chasing?
Street Fighter II
Street Fighter II's one-on-one format made beating an opponent, not a high score, the goal; the fighting-game series Evo began in 1996 around its sequels.
Q 06What did Dennis 'Thresh' Fong win at the 1997 Quake tournament Red Annihilation?
John Carmack's Ferrari 328
John Carmack's Ferrari 328: the id Software co-founder put up his own car as the prize, and Fong beat Tom 'Entropy' Kimzey in the final at E3 in Atlanta.
Q 07Which former Dallas stockbroker founded the Cyberathlete Professional League in June 1997?
Angel Munoz
Angel Munoz founded the CPL in Dallas in June 1997; it ran twice-yearly hotel tournaments and spawned the Cyberathlete Amateur League, built around Counter-Strike.
Q 08Which country first licensed professional gamers, in 2000?
South Korea
South Korea: the Korea e-Sports Association was formed in 2000 under the Ministry of Culture, and pro leagues were televised on channels like Ongamenet and MBCGame.
Q 09Which company backed the World Cyber Games, dubbed the 'Olympics of esports,' launched in 2000?
Samsung
Samsung bankrolled the World Cyber Games from the 2000 WCG Challenge onward; the Korean-run event copied the Olympics with opening ceremonies and gold, silver and bronze medals.
Q 10Which country's LAN-party company Ligarena founded the Electronic Sports World Cup in 2003?
France
France: Ligarena, organiser of the LAN Arena events, launched the ESWC in 2003, holding its early finals at the Futuroscope park near Poitiers.
Q 11Twitch launched in June 2011 as a gaming spin-off of which general-interest streaming site, later shut down by its parent?
Justin.tv
Justin.tv's parent rebranded as Twitch Interactive and shut the old site in August 2014, by which time Twitch ranked fourth for peak U.S. internet traffic.
Q 12How much did Amazon pay for Twitch in August 2014?
$970M
The all-cash deal was Amazon's third recent gaming acquisition; Google had been widely reported as the front-runner.
Q 13What is the name of the trophy awarded to League of Legends world champions?
The Summoner's Cup
The Summoner's Cup, first crafted by Thomas Lyte for the 2012 final, was redesigned by Tiffany & Co. in 2022; Dota 2's International trophy is the Aegis of Champions.
Q 21Which team won back-to-back Internationals in 2018 and 2019, the first repeat champion?
OG
OG had to fight through the 2018 open qualifiers after last-minute roster changes, then beat PSG.LGD 3–2 in the final and Team Liquid 3–1 in 2019.
Q 22Which Ukrainian team won the very first International in 2011?
Natus Vincere
Na'Vi beat EHOME 3–1, then lost the 2012 final to China's Invictus Gaming.
Q 23The Evolution Championship Series (Evo) began in 1996 under what name?
Battle by the Bay
Battle by the Bay was a 40-player Super Street Fighter II Turbo and Street Fighter Alpha 2 event at Sunnyvale Golfland in California; it was renamed Evolution in 2002.
Q 14Which team won the League of Legends World Championship in 2013, 2015 and 2016?
T1
T1, then named SK Telecom T1, won in 2013, 2015 and 2016 with Faker in mid lane, and the organisation added further titles in 2023 and 2024.
Q 15Where was the first League of Legends World Championship held, in June 2011?
DreamHack Summer in Sweden
DreamHack Summer 2011 in Jönköping, Sweden hosted the Season 1 final, where Fnatic beat Against All Authority for a share of a $100,000 prize pool.
Q 16Which Taiwanese team won the 2012 League of Legends World Championship and its $1 million first prize?
Taipei Assassins
Taipei Assassins beat Korea's Azubu Frost 3–1 in Los Angeles; the $2 million pool was the largest in esports history at the time.
Q 17What is the real name of Faker, the League of Legends mid-laner?
Lee Sang-hyeok
Lee Sang-hyeok, born in Seoul in 1996, debuted for SK Telecom T1 in April 2013 with a solo kill on Ambition and became a part-owner of T1 in 2020.
Q 18Which company runs League of Legends and its World Championship?
Riot Games
Riot also runs the Valorant Champions Tour; Valve runs Dota 2's International, Blizzard ran the Overwatch League and Epic staged the Fortnite World Cup.
Q 19Where and when was the first Dota 2 International held?
Gamescom in Cologne, 2011
Gamescom in Cologne, August 2011: Valve announced the $1.6 million tournament only two weeks before it began, and a Ukrainian team beat China's EHOME 3–1 for the $1 million top prize.
Q 20How was The International's record $40 million prize pool of 2021 mostly funded?
Crowdfunded via in-game Battle Passes
Crowdfunded via in-game Battle Passes: a quarter of Battle Pass revenue went to the pool, pushing 2021's to just over $40 million before Valve abandoned the model in 2023.
Q 24'Evo Moment #37,' the famous full parry, was performed by Daigo Umehara against whom at Evo 2004?
Justin Wong
Justin Wong's super was parried hit for hit by Daigo in the 3rd Strike semifinal; Daigo won that set but lost the grand final to Kenji 'KO' Obata.
Q 25Which characters were used in Evo Moment #37?
Ken vs. Chun-Li
Daigo's Ken parried all 15 hits of Chun-Li's Houyoku-sen super, then finished her with a combo; the match was played at Evo 2004 at Cal Poly Pomona.
Q 26Who won the 2019 Fortnite World Cup solo final, taking home the $3 million prize?
Kyle 'Bugha' Giersdorf
Kyle 'Bugha' Giersdorf was a 16-year-old American; Aqua and Nyhrox split the duos prize the day before.
Q 27Where was the 2019 Fortnite World Cup held?
Arthur Ashe Stadium, New York
The tennis venue hosted the finals from July 26 to 28 after ten weeks of online qualifiers.
Q 28Which rapper joined Ninja on a March 2018 Fortnite stream that broke Twitch's record for peak viewers?
Drake
Drake was joined by Travis Scott and JuJu Smith-Schuster too; Ninja, born Tyler Blevins, had started out in competitive Halo 3.
Q 29How much did each of the 12 founding Overwatch League teams pay in franchise fees for the 2018 season?
$20M
Expansion teams paid $35–60 million a year later; by 2023 sponsors had fled and Blizzard folded the city-based league into the Overwatch Champions Series.
Q 30What made the Overwatch League's structure unusual for esports?
Permanent city-based franchises, like U.S. pro sports
Permanent city-based franchises, like U.S. pro sports: the model ran from 2018 to 2023 with teams such as San Francisco Shock and London Spitfire before the league was dissolved.