The crowds cheer louder, the commentators are going crazy, and the players are shouting amongst themselves, trying to outsmart the other team. At first glance, you might swear you were at a Canucks game. “A great start for Team Classic: they have control of the two sniper rifles and they’re just no-scoping people in the middle of the map,” one of the commentators says.

Okay, maybe not a typical Canucks game. It’s the world of Major League Gaming (MLG), the video gamers’ own NHL, where leading players compete for cash, bragging rights, and international recognition. There are teams, coaches, and sponsors, and everything is televised on ESPN. Not bad for a league that started out with people having to bring their own TVs.

MLG is the brainchild of Michael Sepso and Sundance DiGiovanni, two New York gamers who loved the competitive aspect of the “sport” and decided to do something about it in 2002. “They started having tournaments where people brought their TVs and lugged them around the city to play, and then they got in touch with people across the country who were into [competitive gaming] and created a league,” says Bruce Yip, manager of the Amp Energy Pro Team, Canada’s top MLG side, in a phone interview from Toronto.

“When it first started, it looked pretty grassroots…then they started having prize money and it became sizable prize money, and by 2006 it really changed. They got funding, they got sponsors, and it became serious,” Yip says. The most widely played game in the league, both on-line and in live settings, is Halo 3, with other Xbox 360 titles such as Gears of War and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Las Vegas also being played.

After increasing its presence in the U.S. during the past two years (through the ESPN contract, 70,000 on-line matches per month, and as many as 10,000 participants in regional tournaments), the league finally expanded into Canada—through a partnership with Ontario-based Insight Sports Ltd.—with last October’s first MLG Canadian Open, held in Toronto. One of the competitors—and among just 200 registered MLG gamers in Canada, according to Yip—is 19-year-old Ryan Kirk from Vernon. Like most Canadians in MLG, he has to raise funds to travel and compete in the U.S. “Sponsors can really help,” Kirk says, “especially for the Canadian gamers, because it’s really quite expensive to go to these events.”

With funding the biggest challenge for Canadians, Yip is in a position to help at least one gamer. His Amp Energy Pro Team, the only team north of the border with sponsorship, is about to launch a cross-Canada search for a new team member to bring the three-person squad up to the regulation four.

The Amp Your Game National Gaming Tour, the first national Canadian event sponsored by MLG, will focus on filling the team’s final slot. The nine-city tour will give Canadian gamers a chance to go pro, with full sponsorship and contracts in tow. The tour comes to B.C. on July 31, with Richmond Centre hosting the event. Yip says he hopes the tour will act as a builder for pro gaming in Canada.

The money certainly won’t dissuade, with high-profile teams in the U.S. often inking three-year contracts worth as much as $250,000. So far, Kirk has won about $2,000, having placed in the top 32 in one tournament on his own and in the top six nationally with a team he coached at last year’s Canadian Open. “Once you go competitive, there’s kind of a goal to play to: instead of just hopping on [the Xbox] to waste two hours, you feel as if you’re working towards something,” he says. “The only way you’re going to be able to achieve the goal of being pro or placing well in an event is to go, and if you don’t do that then you’re kind of putting yourself in a hole.”