Gaming League Announces Salaries, Draft

$5 million will be available to gamers in the Championship Gaming Series in its first year.

The Championship Gaming Series, an international league for competitive gaming, demands to be taken seriously. The league announced Thursday that it will offer gamers $5 million in salaries and bonuses this year. It also announced that it will hold its first “draft” at the Playboy Mansion on June 12… so scratch that “taken seriously” part.

"This is the moment the gaming world has been waiting for," said CGS commissioner Andy Reif in a press release. “We will be paying salaries and bonuses to our players in excess of $5 million dollars during the 2007 season. The time has come for a new era of professional gaming as sports entertainment.”

We’re not sure that gaming fans have been anticipating the CGS anymore than football fans anticipated the ill-fated XFL, but we’ll give Reif the benefit of the doubt.

Online qualifiers for the draft will begin on April 28, with the first live event to be held May 11-12 in Los Angeles. Players who reach the draft will be split into six city-based teams of ten. PC gamers will compete in Counter-Strike: Source and FIFA 2007, while console gamers will compete in Dead or Alive 4 and Project Gotham Racing 3. Matches will be broadcast on DIRECTV.