Competitive video game playing, also known as esports, is now a high school varsity sport in eight states.

It began with Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island in the fall of 2018. A few months later, the National Federation of State High School Associations said Alabama, Mississippi and Texas Charter schools have joined the mix.

CNN was recently invited to see to a competition in Georgia between North Atlanta High School and Grady High School, also in Atlanta, at the city’s newest esports arena. The venue opened in February as part of the Johnson STEM Activity Center.

The esports millionaires club is an exclusive bunch. Very few players have crossed the threshold. In fact a total of 68 players have made the club to date. One game has contributed 89% of millionaire club entrants. Or maybe you can attribute this to one event.

Valve’s The International has created 61 millionaires in esports. We say ‘Valve’, but in reality the community created them, Valve just enabled it to happen. Now, we say “richest” players, but this is based entirely on prize earnings – we do not take into account salary, endorsements, or any other form of supplementary income.

Popular and long-running TV series The Simpson saw something pretty interesting this last Sunday. Bart Simpson, bratty son of Homer Simpson, got into esports! Specifically, he got so good he managed to be in competitions (along with some other recurring characters).

Yesterday, Google announced plans for a new game-streaming service called Stadia. Besides the logo, the controller, and a single game — Doom Eternal — the announcement left us with more questions than answers. Primary in my mind has been the query of why Google needs to be in the gaming business at all. Isn’t it enough to dominate web search, ads, and browsers, smartphone operating systems, and maps? What part of our lives does Google not want to know about? And then it dawned on me that we might be looking at it from the wrong perspective: what if Stadia isn’t a case of Google aggressively entering a new business sphere, but rather a defensive one to protect its existing kingdom?

College scholarships, six-figure average salaries and houses in Los Angeles with personal chefs, nutritionists and more at the ready. And training – hours and hours of training.

Player Xmithie (pronounced “ex-myth-ie”), for example, practices Tuesday through Friday with games and tournaments on the weekend during the regular season and playoffs. Days start around 9:30 a.m., team meetings are around 10 a.m. with practices and scrimmages from 11 a.m. until 9 p.m. His day typically ends around midnight.

This is the lifestyle of a professional athlete.

Japan has been a pillar of the broader videogames industry for decades. Companies like Sony and Nintendo have been pivotal parts of the growth of gaming since the early days. When it comes to esports, however, Japan has been more follower than innovator. Restrictive gambling and advertising laws prevented organizers and developers from supporting tournaments with large prize pools.

In the last year, however, some of those restrictions have been loosened, opening the door for companies to more actively grow Japan’s esports industry. The Esports Observer spoke to the CEO of one such company, PlayBrain’s Mike Sheetal, about one of Japan’s major esports growth opportunities: broadcast technology.