Despite the growth of the eSports industry over the last decade, it has received criticism from some quarters about the legitimacy of being called sports. Critics of eSports haven’t probably grown at the same rate as the industry itself but there are many who still call eSports being a sport a myth.
Why do eSports critics not consider it to be a sport and why are they wrong? We try and offer a view to counter the reasons stated by some of those who detest eSports.
Table of Contents
“Nobody Wants to Watch Them Play eSports”
A few years ago, when YouTube launched YouTube Gaming, Jimmy Kimmel came out with a video panning the idea of watching other people play video games.
Kimmel had said:
“Watching someone play video games is like going to a restaurant and someone eat your food for you.”
“When I was growing up, the only time I watched other people play video games is when I ran out of quarters.”
Kimmel did admit on that chat there’s big money in doing that. Well that is about the only part that has proved to be correct. Some of the Twitch and YouTube gamers earn millions streaming their own play to hungry audiences around the world.
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The video reeked of a massively naive view about people’s wants and surely enough it was disliked a whopping 195k times. Some of the comments below the video make for stark reading too and a representation of how badly the video had misread the situation.
Even mid-level streamers, especially on Twitch and YouTube, among other such platforms can grow on to make a steady income with time. It takes time and effort and there are no short-cuts to making a living out of it but there are scores of them who earn five-figure incomes per year being streamers.
The crux of the aforementioned fact is they are able to earn that much because there is an audience who loves watching them play.
The view about eSports not being sports itself isn’t very different from this aforementioned view and it is down to the lack of understanding about what goes behind becoming a successful eSports player.
One of the biggest reasons the opponents of the theory that eSports is sports, dish out, is the following.
There’s No Physical Element to it Like Other Sports!
According to Dictionary.com, a sport is defined as “an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature.”
Macmillan Dictionary defines sport as “an activity in which players or teams compete against each other, usually an activity that involves physical effort.”
I am sure these definitions have been heard a few times in this debate. And in both these definitions, while the need for physical activity for something to be defined as a sport, it’s not a must.
Now, can anyone deny that eSports needs tremendous skills? Highly Doubtful.
Can anyone talk the competitive nature of eSports down? Extremely Unlikely.
Which is why it brings us to the one discerning point which critics have laid out over and over again; it involves no physical activity – if you discount those twitchy thumbs on the controllers that is – and hence eSports cannot be sports.
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For a moment, let’s even forget the technicalities or the semantics involved in defining sports using a dictionary.
Gone are the days when video-gamers would spend hours in front of the PCs in a hope it would get them to competitive levels where they could make a living out of it. There was a time gamers were typically associated with being couch potatoes and a wide variety of health issues were associated with excessive gaming.
Now, eSports players are needed to pay attention to the physical side of things too. While superior gaming skills is an obvious must to get to levels where one can consider making eSports their career, the focus on juggling the balance between the mental and physical factors affecting a player’s gameplay has tremendously.
eSports players have both, exercises and diet, prescribed by experts and often make the difference between winning and losing.
This change comes from researches which point to how mental and physical health are related and poor physical health can hamper a person’s mental capabilities. Same is true for eSports players which is why the preparation is not a lot different from those playing “conventional” sports.
Add to the similarities between eSports and what its critics consider traditional sports. In both, teams or individual players are expected to train to try and score over their opposition; there’re selectors, coaches, physical and mental trainers for teams and players and the matches are governed by tournament referees.
And obviously eSports, much like other sports, is followed and watched by its fans globally, which in turn helps monetize those involved in ‘playing’.
The ESPN Stance Shaping Opinions?
It’s interesting to note sports broadcaster ESPN’s stance on this and the repercussions of it. The then-ESPN boss, John Skipper had refused to call eSports as a sport in 2014 following Amazon’s decision to take over Twitch.
When asked about the company’s take on the Amazon-Twitch deal, he had proclaimed:
“It’s [eSports] not a sport — it’s a competition. Chess is a competition. Checkers is a competition….Mostly, I’m interested in doing real sports.”
A case of a shrewd businessman whose crystal ball had predicted a bleak future or that of sour grapes for missing out to the competition?
What made things slightly ambivalent then was ESPN’s decision to then partner with Valve to broadcast the DOTA2 eSports competition in 2014.
Two years later, Skipper watched the world finals of the 2015 League of Legends competition at Madison Square Garden and looking on at the more than 10k strong audience cheer on their teams it seemed like he had a change in heart.
eSports has been covered by ESPN since and have a big section dedicate to it on their website, ESPN.com.
Perplexing then, in 2018, when ESPN, under pressure from cord-cutting and other problems, launched their live streaming service ESPN+ – charging subscribers $5/month without the need of a cable connection – they did not provide eSports as a part of the package.
Make no mistake, it’s not that eSports was poorer without having ESPN or any other sports broadcaster on board because its audiences have only grown since. According to a report here, the annual viewership growth for eSports is expected to be nearly 15% on a year on year basis between 2016 and 2021.
Using that same time-frame, the revenue growth is expected to be 27.4% on a year on year basis.
The point here is more about the acceptance of eSports as a sport and how ESPN’s fluctuating stance might have played a part in further moulding the critic opinion because ESPN is one of the biggest sporting networks around the world.
If and when ESPN and other major networks world-over start getting on-board, the increased visibility, one believes, will allow more and more people to jump on to this as a sport.
What are Others Saying?
Debate.org is a website which, as the name, suggests, encourages debates about topics ranging from political to sports and everything between. They have one on whether eSports should be labelled as something other than sports and the 84% of the respondents said no, i.e. 84% would prefer eSports to be called sports.
That’s a home run as far as polls about topics like these go.
There are some who have a problem with the nerd culture nursing territorial ambitions like the author of this piece with The Week.
Um, no, eSports isn’t replacing another sport in a basket of sports but carving out its own niche.
He adds, among other things:
“Two years earlier, a private university in Illinois created the nation’s first varsity gaming team and began awarding ‘athletic’ scholarships to skilled players. Imagine being that kid’s parents. “Oh, yes, Dylan just got accepted with an athletic scholarship.’ ‘That’s wonderful. Cross country, right?’ ‘No, Wario’s Woods.'”
If getting into a college on a scholarship which awards a student for his/her proficiency in an eSports game is the reason why eSports cannot be put in the same bracket as sports, then there’s not much to add. Chuckle and move on.
Look at the Olympics.
There have been enough discussions at the highest level to suggest eSports could make it to the 2024 Olympics as a demonstration ‘sport’ and the only probable thing holding it back is the violence associated with some of the gaming titles itself.
eSports has already been a part of the 2018 Asian Games as a demonstration sport, in which nine countries won medals. Commonwealth Sport, which organizes the Commonwealth Games, have also gotten into a partnership with the Global eSports Federation to explore synergies between the two.
In short, while critics of eSports might be averse to bringing them under the same umbrella as sports, there’s enough evidence to suggest that’s exactly what’s happening.