The CPL announcement, heralding this accomplishment, holds little new details about the World Tour Finals other than the bombshell of MTV’s presence. The finals begin on Sunday, November 20 and Monday, November 21, 2005 at the web2zone Cyber Center in New York. Here the entire bracket will be played except for the Final match, which will be played at the new Nokia Theater in Times Square on Tuesday November 22. The Finals match will have a purse of $250,000, in addition the CPL will award the player with the highest point total, earned by placings at each of the World Tour Stops and accumulated prior to the finals, the “Intel Player of the Year”, 20,000 greenbacks, and the Intel cup.

MTV will show live segments of the tournament during its regular programming and will be filming a half hour special, whether this special is viewed through the stereotypical gaming lens remains to be seen. GotFrag had a chance to speak Angel Munoz, head of the CPL, about this announcement and he was very upbeat about this news.

“MTV has partnered with The CPL and will provide coverage of the Finals on MTV Overdrive, the new broadband video channel from MTV.com.” said Munoz, “MTV will also feature live highlights of the tournament and create a half-hour special of the World Tour Finals to air on MTV on Saturday, November 26, 2005. “

The World Tour Finals are trying something different from a usual World Tour stop by hosting part of its event at a LAN center, web2zone, and then the finals at another location. Munoz explained that this was to help focus the USA media on the Finals which “has a bit of an attention deficit when it comes to eSports.”

“We think that web2zone it's an excellent NYC venue for our preliminary matches. The final match event is a total media event and the community of gamers knows that the USA media has a bit of an attention deficit when it comes to eSports.” said Munoz, “Therefore, we think it is best to keep the event at the Nokia Theatre focused on the final match. Which is the highlight of the entire tour anyway. Think of it as a $250,000 virtual boxing match.

Clearly if MTV is noticing, how much longer before other big pop culture players tune in to the growing cultural phenomenon that is eSports.

“Videogames have become a key driver behind today’s pop culture and we are excited to embrace the new frontier of professional competition in bringing the head-to-head action to our audience,” said Salli Frattini, Senior Vice President for MTV Networks. (From the Press Release)

Press Release in its entirety on the next page.