Only four years ago e-sports looked destined to be included as exhibition sports at Paris 2024, en route to full medal inclusion at Los Angeles 2028. But the pandemic took the momentum out of their advocates’ lobbying and the success of the new sports showcased at Tokyo appears to have put paid to the Olympic e-dream.
The growth in e-sports has been explosive. Analysts at Newzoo estimate that the industry last year had revenues of $947 million from a global audience of 474 million. No need for such a lucrative movement to seek the sporting legitimacy afforded by the Olympics, you’d have thought. Coming out of the less-than-stellar Rio Games, however, it was the International Olympic Committee that was dazzled by the success of the upstart gamers.
Are e-sports really sports? Do they involve sufficient physicality? What of the simulated violence at the core of many of the most popular game formats? How legitimate are their competing governing bodies? None of these was as important as the question of whether inclusion in the Olympics could provide the IOC access to the youth market that it craves.
The Asian Games of 2018, held under the IOC’s umbrella, included a number of e-sports as demonstration events. Next year in Hangzhou full medals will be awarded across eight games, including FIFA, League of Legends and Street Fighter V. Given the origin and ownership of the world’s most popular e-sports it is no surprise that Asia is the testing ground for this Olympic experiment.
Quite what Baron de Coubertin might think is irrelevant. After all, tug-of-war has long since disappeared from the Olympics. Thomas Bach, the IOC President, has publicly expressed doubts about the violence at the heart of many e-sports, but as a former fencer himself you’d have thought armed combat - especially only on screen - wouldn’t be any impediment. And there’s no sign of him trying to oust shooting from the current Games roster.
"We have a clear red line that we do not want to deal with any game which is contrary to the Olympic values. Any game where violence is glorified or accepted, where you have any kind of discrimination, they have nothing to do with the Olympic values." Thomas Bach, March 2021
Bach will have been emboldened by the freshness that skateboarding, BMX freestyle, climbing, 3x3 basketball and surfing bought to his flagship product this summer. All are retained for Paris, which will also feature an Olympic debut for breakdancing. Shortly after Rio, the Paris 2024 team said they were keen to discuss e-sports, but outdoor activities have since won out.
“At the end of the day, it’s about people running around in shorts in front of people having a nice beer and talking about life.” Paris 2024 CEO Etienne Thobois at a UK Sport event in 2020
E-sports’ proponents will doubtless press on with their lobbying. After all, the route for any sport to Olympic inclusion is always a torturous one. And some have been been plugging away with varying degrees of enthusiasm and no success for many years - squash being the obvious example.
The lobbyists might ask themselves again, however, whether they really need the Olympics. Look at the success of team franchise owners such as Team Liquid or Fnatic, the revenues of the games manufacturers (which dwarf the Newzoo figure for competitive e-sports above), online and in-venue audiences, as well as the earnings of the superstar gamers, and it’s clear that the e-sports market is already well established.
True, the pandemic has sliced valuations across the industry, and it has familiar financial growth pains, but the long term upward trajectory seems clear. The greater goal might be a unified 4-yearly e-sports jamboree under the movement’s own banner, not so much to rival the Olympics but to steal a sizeable bundle of its commercial dollars.
More or less cricket
By the time you read this, England’s cricketers may have decided the fate of this winter’s Ashes. The ECB appears effectively to have put the series in the players’ hands, with Australian quarantine regulations for the team’s visiting families the key issue. Last week the Aussie captain Tim Paine boldly declared that the Ashes were going ahead whether Joe Root was on the plane from England or not. I’m not sure he’s right. As a fan, I hope the ECB has managed to assemble a competitive team. But after scrapping a brief trip to Pakistan for both men’s and women’s teams and now appearing to abdicate the Ashes decision, if the Australia tour does go ahead it will feel like a ‘victory’ that the ECB doesn’t deserve.
Room at the top
Three fresh CEO vacancies at governing bodies - British Rowing, Badminton England, England Boxing - are likely to be followed by others as one Olympic cycle ends and the next starts. Fantastic, emotionally rewarding, complex roles that require tough skin and a glass-full mentality.