StarCraft lends itself very well to spectating, partly because the game is so physically demanding and reliant on execution that no player has ever truly mastered it in its eleven years of existence. It's not overly flashy, and even a brand new spectator can figure out without difficulty what is going on during a match. Players make armies and buildings, and eventually one of them is decimated in a very visually clear-cut way.

The game is also incredibly complex, allowing players to develop their own styles that are easily recognized. Players who focus on aggression and micromanagement, players who focus on superior unit production, players who focus on timing and decision making. Boxer's marines and dropships, iloveoov's endless streams of tanks, Savior's game sense turned aura of invincibility. Asking why people haven't moved on from StarCraft simply because it's eleven years old is like asking why people didn't move on from basketball when that basketball-with-trampolines show came out on Spike TV.

The more important facet here is the economic situation of Korea circa 1999. The country wasn't doing so hot, and the government spent a shitload of money ensuring the entire nation had internet options enviable by any other nation as a means of encouraging the booming game industry to move in. StarCraft was the big game at that time, and Koreans used their new infrastructure to create a phenomenon. Koreans will admit that they are highly competitive by nature, and even before Boxer was a known entity, being the best StarCraft player in your class was a bragging right.

The game attracted attention, and therefore attracted sponsors. Organized tournaments started popping up all over Korea, and when the big guns of various industries started taking notice (Like the Coca-Cola OSL in 2000), tv crews and high paydays became a reality for the best players. That in turn encouraged existing StarCraft fans to improve their play, and the media attention drew increasingly bigger crowds to the game. It'd be asinine to claim that StarCraft saved the Korean economy in that time, but it certainly helped. Suddenly there was a brand new, wildly popular method of advertising, and sponsors came out of their economic shells to get a piece of the action.

Given the media exposure, diversity of the game and its players, and the ease of spectating StarCraft offered, even people with little to no interest in video games took notice. From that point, rivalries began to emerge, storylines were shaped and Boxer's unexpected charisma as essentially the ambassador to the media (as well as the strongest and most exciting player of that era) drew a continually wider audience. Major league results were popping up in Korean newspaper sports sections. TV shows that merely discussed players and events were launched and gained viewership necessary to justify their existence.

As StarCraft became more and more mainstream, the fact that young men were appearing on tv and lining their pockets with cash (despite ill-advised ridiculous space suit uniforms in the early years) legitimatized the industry. Those faces, rivalries, and storylines became popular culture. Korean grandmas knew the name Lim Yo Hwan.

So, with a fanbase so rabid and the hectic, incredibly entertaining nature of StarCraft, the industry grew and grew. Governing bodies were created, leagues started offering larger cash prizes, teams started picking up more and more lucrative sponsorship contracts due to the ridiculous ROI the sponsors got out of it. All of this is what created a multi-million dollar industry out of an anomaly, and is the foundation for why StarCraft still thrives today. Now there's new faces, but the gameplay is more refined and more pleasing to watch. Every time an old rivalry would fade, or a slipping player would retire, another would appear in its/his place. Now, instead of Boxer vs Yellow, we have Flash vs Jaedong, and it's every bit as interesting now as it was then.

A fanbase that allowed StarCraft to become as big as it is today won't so readily let itself become obscure, and there is always the universal draw of young men on tv. Considering how lucrative the industry remains to sponsors, there has been no reason for leagues to become defunct, and no shortage of spectators clamoring to watch the fireworks.

That's an excerpt from the thread, you can download the whole thing here.

Edit: Credit for the original upload to Kibibit on TL.