They wanted to make it more "legitimate," presumably because the MLB was tired of being known as the sport with the fattest players.
Honestly several aspects of the pro gamer world have always irked me, or maybe it's just the mindset that it seems to foster, which is of the uber competitive, absolutely no fun, (Fox only) variety.
And now they're just fostering more of the exclusionary, closed off, boys only attitude that we should be phasing out of in gaming too. It's like a horrible chimera of smugness and bile.
And they're kinda missing the point of gender exclusion in other sports, those ones actually involve physical activity and hard, brute force collisions. It makes sense that you don't see too many women linebackers in the NFL, but there's absolutely no physical qualifications outside of functioning hands and fingers to play video games, and even then we've seen plenty of one handed players kick ass with the right setups.
So I agree with Carly. You're not legitimizing your sport. You're only telling more and more girls that they're not welcome among us gamers, and you're making your whole organization just look worse in the process.
I mean, I already think the concept of calling pro gaming a "sport" is dubious. Sure, I had some irks with pro gaming, but I at least respected it for what it was. Calling it "e-sports" just sounds kinda sad. And while the organization behind these "e-sports" desperately tries to prove that sitting in a chair and pressing buttons is totally a sport you guys! It's probably not the wisest move to do something as blatantly stupid and sexist like this. Not when the games industry as a whole is currently having all of its undesirable actions towards women currently being thrown under a super powered microscope.
So, sorry IeSF. You're probably not gettin' that Gatorade sponsorship anytime soon. Looks like your "pro-athletes" will still be stuck with Cheetos and MTN Dew.