To qualify as a fully-fledged esports title, what components must a game have?

1. The game itself must be good enough, and of a particular kind.

2. There must be 'bleachers', such as GTV, streaming-video and demo's (in physical sports, watching games happens even at the lowest of little-league levels).

3. New players need coaching, which can be done through video-tutorials, demo's (with audio or text assistance), and through in-game practice (with audio or text-assistance, and additionally through visual pointers, which may literally be arrows). Giving new player's proper direction is vital to the success of any sport.

4. Practice facilities (for every level of player), should be easily available and accessible. No sport would survive if beginning-level players were required to fly half-way around the world just to play one, meaningless, little-league scrimmage.

5. Leagues, ladders and tournaments (for every level of player), must also be available and easily accessible, for the same reason as #4.

Quake Live is missing almost all of these things. Where they exist, they exist through third-parties. Most players will either fail to understand the components exist elsewhere, or will simply not bother trying to find and use them.

Anyone who has played organized sports can tell you exactly how they are structured. I myself played baseball and soccer, starting at the age of 5, and continuing until 13. The basic structure is no different in esports. To create a proper esports title, you can simply imagine going through the system of a normal sport, and apply it to esports (making improvements where the technology allows). If you've never gone through a regular sports model, this process will be more difficult for you.

The ad-system of QL is ideal for esports mechanisms. If people are spending more time in the QL system, clicking through the various pages of ladders, tournament schedules, VOD's/demo's and whatever else is part of the esports aspects, it means more money is generated through the ads. In fact, much of the QL system is ideal for esports, but for some reason, the core components are missing.