While eSports is more famous for tactical and shooting games, football has been one of the outdoor sports which is closely associated with eSports over the years. In the passage we look at the history of this association between eSports and football and what the future holds for the relationship between the two.
The global market for eSports has recently witnessed immense growth over the past few years. Though organized video gaming competitions have existed for decades, the modern day concept of eSports emerged in the 2000s with the widespread popularity of multiplayer video games.
With the further development of internet and computing technologies, more and more people around the world now have easier access to the internet and video games.
This has resulted in projections that the eSports market will more than double its current $1 billion plus revenues by 2023 with an annual growth of 16% per year.
It’s also estimated that there are some 495 million fans following the emerging sport, with the majority of audiences coming from populous markets like the United States, China, Brazil and India.
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What about eSports in Football?
American readers, please note, we are talking about soccer!
When most people are asked about eSports, the first gaming titles that come to mind are usually fantasy shooter based video games like Dota 2, Fortnite, League of Legends and Starcraft II, which not surprisingly, are the top four most popular eSports games in terms of global prize money (along with the first person realistic shooter Counter Strike: Global Offensive).
When we specifically narrow down the eSports focus to football (or soccer as pronounced in the United States, Canada and Australia), the most popular football title in terms of prize money is modestly ranked 28th on the list, being FIFA 19.
Its predecessor FIFA 18, ranks a few grades further down at 36th. The second-best selling football franchise, Pro Evolution Soccer, on the other hand, ranks at a paltry number 86 out of the total 100 games listed.
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FIFA’s Governance in Football
The world governing body of football is FIFA (short for the French Fedration Internationale de Football Association) which was founded in 1904 in Paris, France. Today, it is the largest sport federation in the world with membership of 211 national football associations having its modern day headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland.
FIFA is most popularly known for its FIFA World Cup, being held every four years since the tournament’s inception in 1930.
It is, by far, the world’s largest single sporting event in terms of global audience with more than 3.5 billion people around the world tuning in to watch the month-long 2018 FIFA World Cup at some point (which is astonishingly almost half the global population), and an impressive 1.12 billion views for the actual Final between winners France and Croatia held in the Luzhniki Stadium of Moscow, Russia.
FIFA’s Football Gaming Franchise
The FIFA gaming franchise first kicked off in 1993, being the first ever football game to have an official license from FIFA.
It quickly gained a large fan following namely due to having the exclusive licenses to not only the FIFA name and all its tournaments (including the aforementioned FIFA World Cup and smaller tournaments like the FIFA Club World Cup, AFC Asian Cup and the CONMEBOL Copa America), but also the licenses to the footballers players association (FIFPro), national teams as well as private clubs and tournaments like the UEFA European Championship/Euros, Champions League, UEFA Europa League.
The games also have separate standalone titles exclusively for the FIFA World Cup, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, FIFA Street as well as management titles that let players take the role of a national or club teams coaching manager.
In 2011, the franchise was localized into 18 different languages and distributed in 51 different countries and has continued its global reach.
It remains one of the world’s most popular (if not, the most popular) game franchises and has also earned the distinction by the Guinness World Records as being the best-selling sports video game franchise in the world (in 2019, the franchise racked over 282.4 million copies sold in total).
Since 2004, FIFA has also overseen the FIFA eWorld Cup, formerly called the FIFA Interactive World Cup (FIWC). It is a global eSports tournament held jointly by FIFA and its presenting partner EA Sports.
The initial qualifying stages enabled millions of players to compete online thus resulting in the tournament to be recognized by the Guinness World Records as the largest online eSports game.
The tournament, unlike the actual FIFA World Cup, is held annually and sees individual players competing against one another to win a prize fund of $250,000 and a chance to meet some of the greatest players of the game.
Pro Evolution Soccer
The second best-selling title among football games is Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) also called eFootball Winning Eleven in Japan and previously North America. It has been in continuous production since 2001 being published annually by the Japanese giant Konami.
PES has had a longstanding rivalry with its older competitor, EA Sports FIFA franchise. Following behind its rivals footsteps, PES has also earned global commercial success selling over 107 million copies along with 200 million mobile game downloads till 2019.
PES is especially known for its support of the eSports movement. Since 2003, the eFootball.Open (previously known as the PESLeague), has been held annually to determine the best single player of the games latest installment.
Initially open to selected European countries, in 2010 the event was publicized globally attracting players from all over the world.
In 2018, eFootball.Pro was launched as a 3v3 team-based gaming tournament that is uniquely contracted by professional football clubs. Players who have performed well in this tournament have been recruited by the actual clubs to play on their behalf.
The prize money split among the three winning members is $75,000 – as compared to $25,000 provided to the sole winner of the 1v1 eFootball.Open.
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Football Clubs and eSports
With football increasingly getting more involved in the booming market for eSports, it’s only natural for private footballing clubs to also join the fray.
Major clubs including Paris Saint-Germaine (PSG) and Schalke 04 have set up their own dedicated eSports wings. Some clubs are already signing up new FIFA gamers, whilst others are building their own teams or acquiring existing teams.
Nowadays, almost all the major footballing leagues have their own dedicated eSports equivalents and have created their own FIFA tournaments.
Among the largest of them is the ePremier League (mirroring the structure of the most popular footballing league in the world, the English Premier League) which has two UK-based players for each team in the League.
Apart from the ePremier League, other major eSports footballing leagues include the eLaLiga, eBundesliga and eMLS which all compete against one another in the FIFA Global Series.
Concurrently, individual football stars like the Brazilian great Ronaldinho have also gotten involved by creating the eLigaSul in collaboration with PES to host competitions across 26 countries.
An interesting development to note is that instead of limiting their scope to only football games (with the highest ranking football game positioned as the 28th most valuable eSports game out of a total of 100 titles mentioned earlier), many clubs are now expanding their portfolio to include competition in other more popular eSports titles.
Examples of Football Clubs Joining into the eSports Fray
- FC Barcelona acquiring a ready-made team to compete in the popular game Rocket League;
- Schalke 04 regularly sending teams to play European League of Legends Championship Series;
- AS Roma building a partnership with UK-based eSports company Fnatic to sponsor the team in exchange for playing on their behalf;
- PSG collaborating with Chinese team LGD to play Dota 2;
- Manchester City partnering with one of the biggest eSports players FaZe Clan to create engaging social content, co-branded products and to host exclusive global eSporting events.
The above examples illustrate how eSports have now penetrated the footballing industry and how football organizations and clubs are now capitalizing on the growing fervor in order to promote their brands further.
Rather than being represented as pure football-oriented organizations, clubs like PSG, Schalke 04 and Manchester City are seeking to develop a more holistic entertainment company model to increase their fan followings and revenues and become more versatile global brands.
A recent statement from Mancester City regarding the tie-up with FaZe Clan sums up the aspirations of the club to become just that we recognize that fans want to celebrate their love for football across many aspects of their lives, including fashion, music, and gaming, to create a culture that goes beyond what happens on the pitch.
Footballers Pitching in to eSports
We earlier mentioned that Brazilian icon Ronaldinho recently got involved with PES to collaborate on a multi-country tournament in 2018.
Apart from that, he has also established his own eSports organization called R10 esports. His team is composed entirely of eight young, up and coming Brazilian gamers playing the latest version of FIFA.
He, like many other past and current players are increasingly seeing the exploding value of eSports in the global scene.
One of the pioneering footballers to see the growing potential of eSports is the Dutch footballing legend Ruud Gullit. His attention was first garnered when he presented the finals trophy to eventual champion – Spencer Gorilla Ealing at the FIWC 2017 Grand Final.
From there on, he has developed his own team and academy dubbed Team Gullit competing against others in the latest FIFA installment. His goal is to provide players with the best training options to enable them to succeed and to develop themselves as players.
Another superstar footballer to enter the ranks is the Welsh and currently Real Madrid maestro Gareth Bale.
In partnership with 38 Entertainment Group, Bale has created Ellevens Esports, which apart from playing FIFA, will also compete head on in major tournaments involving hit titles like Rocket League, Counter-Strike, and PUBG.
Another major mention is Germany international and Arsenal midfielder Mesut Ozil and his team M10 Esports. Like Ronaldinho, Ozil too has dedicated the team name to his jersey number. Having initially started off playing FIFA only, his seven-member strong team now also plays professionally in both Fortnite and Battle Royale.
Football in WCG
The World Cyber Games began all the way back in the year 2000 and since then, barring a break of five years between 2014-18, have been held each year. What’s interesting to note is FIFA has been the game of choice in all but one of the editions of those games (being not included in 2019), thereby giving football that boost again.
Each year, the latest version of FIFA was used during the WCG.
eSports, Football and Foray into the Olympics
Though eSports titles of other genres have traditionally dominated the limelight and have been active as of recent in major international general sporting events like the Asian Games of 2018 and the Southeast Asian Games of 2019, footballing games have yet to receive the same attention.
With recent talks of including eSports as a demonstration sport as early as the Paris Games in 2024, the sky is literally the limit for eSports having also cemented its legitimacy by being featured both in the 2018 Asian Games and followed the next year in the 2019 Southeast Asian Games.
The logical next step would be for eSports to get inducted into the Olympic Games, the largest multi-sport event in the world.
The main question regarding eSports and the Olympics is if the fledgling sport can meet all the criteria necessary for engagement.
Concerns over the violent themes of many eSports titles along with the non-traditional nature of the sport have led conservative thinkers like the current International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach to be pessimistic regarding eSports.
He has shown wariness of the legitimacy of eSports, especially the violent nature and characteristics of many popular games mentioning that no games promoting violence would be permitted in the Olympics.
Others counter that the IOC has been running double standards regarding its concern for eSports. Proponents of having eSports in the Olympics include Jacob Jake Lyon (a professional Overwatch player for the Houston Outlaws) who has argued that many current Olympic sports themselves either have origins of violence or continue to portray violent themes.
He has pointed references to boxing, fencing and some biathlons to name a few examples.
Regardless of the degree of violence, due to the sheer variety of eSports games, if it does boil down to narrowing the list, then the IOC and other stakeholders would need to work together and develop a criteria which would allow coming to a consensus.
Games like FIFA and PES have obvious competition from the other, more famous eSports games but a with a few quirks of fate and twists in the tale, one never knows things might turn around for football in eSports.