Welcome to Axis ProRata, a podcast that takes just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech, business, and politics.

Sponsored by AT&T. I'm Dan Premack on today's show, how Facebook finally won a news cycle and a tech startup that could double or triple how long your avocados stay fresh.

But first, the incredible rise of e-sports.

This past Saturday night, around 11,000 people packed into Brooklyn's Barclays Center,

but they weren't there for an NBA game or a concert.

They were there to watch the finals of Overwatch League,

where something called the London Spitfire beat the Philadelphia Fusion and took home a $1 million payday.

And London Spitfire had done it. They will fly high as your Overwatch League champions.

And those 11,000 fans were very into it. I heard a sports radio host note that it was

louder than any Stanley Cup final or

NBA final he had ever attended. So if you're a bit lost already, that's okay. Let me explain.

Overwatch is a video game, one of those so-called first shooter games where you're basically

trying to get from point A to point B without getting killed and probably killing a bunch of people

in the process. And it's something

anyone can play. But a lot of the best Overwatch players are on professional teams, which play

against other professional teams. And it's becoming very big business, whether you're talking

about people who show up to watch the games live, like at the Barclay Center the other night,

or people watching through streaming video services like Twitch, which is

owned by Amazon. Now, I'm a big sports fan and very casual gamer and readily admit I don't

quite understand the appeal of people watching other people play video games. But that doesn't

matter because people reportedly spent nearly 18 million hours watching esports between January and

March of this past year.

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