USA Rock Paper Scissors League

The USA Rock Paper Scissors League was an American organization that ran national tournament competitions in the simple hand game rock paper scissors, treating what is normally an informal way of settling disputes as a structured, televised sport with substantial prize money. The league crowned its first national champion on April 9, 2006, at the USARPS League Championship held at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, with the winner receiving a cash prize of fifty thousand dollars, an amount the league continued to offer to later champions. The organization was created and directed by marketer Matti Leshem, who served as its commissioner, and it secured television broadcast deals with both the A&E Network and ESPN2 to air its championship events to a national audience. Despite this early media attention, the league did not last, and reporting from 2014 described it as defunct by that time, bringing an end to one of the more prominent attempts to turn rock paper scissors into an organized competitive spectacle.