Professional gaming league Championship Gaming Series (CGS) is set to close its doors, after backers BSkyB, STAR and DirecTV pulled out of the business.
Headquartered in Los Angeles, the Championship Gaming Series launched in 2007 - with events broadcast to a global audience of more than 100 million households.
The company also enjoyed support from high profile strategic partners including Microsoft, Dell, PepsiCo and Creative.
However, this was not enough to save the business, with a statement on the company’s website indicating that "profitability was too far in the future for us to sustain operations in the interim."
The demise of Championship Gaming Series follows that of other professional leagues
Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) and
World Series of Video Games, both of which succumbed to similar funding problems.
The Championship Gaming Series statement insists that its concept was "ahead of its time and we are extremely proud of what we’ve accomplished."
"Our goal was to be ahead of the curve in the e-sports space, and we conceived of CGS as a true sports league. We invested wholeheartedly in the venture and presented viewers with a top-notch production, but the economics just didn’t add up for us at this time," added the statement.
