How it unfolded
OnGameNet and KeSPA chose to hold the Proleague's Round 1 final not in an indoor studio but on a purpose-built stage set up on the sand of Gwangalli Beach in Busan, turning a peak-season beach crowd directly into a live audience. Organizers estimated roughly 100,000 people gathered around the stage, a figure that has been disputed on accuracy ever since but has become the number most closely associated with Korean esports regardless. Media coverage at the time noted the crowd outnumbered attendance at professional baseball games being played in Busan around the same time, adding further buzz. The match itself was a multi-game series mixing individual and team play, and Hanbit Stars, anchored by Kang Do-kyung and Park Kyung-lak, beat SK Telecom T1, led by Lim Yo-hwan and Choi Yeon-sung, to take the title. Footage of the final, played as the sun set behind the stage and the lights of Gwangan Bridge came on, became one of the most-replayed clips used to introduce esports to newcomers.
Why it still matters
This was the first demonstration that esports could scale beyond an indoor broadcast product into a city-sized outdoor event. The Gwangalli final became an annual Proleague fixture for several years afterward, and the format of filling a stadium-scale crowd for a final was later inherited wholesale by League of Legends Worlds and The International. It reset the ceiling for what scale in esports could mean.