In 2013, 32 million unique viewers tuned in to the finals of the League of Legends World Championships – more viewers than those of game seven of the NBA finals in the same year. The following year, the same finals were held in the football stadium that hosted games in the 2002 Football World Cup, capable of holding over 40,000 people.
eSports are coming, and they’re coming fast. It’s becoming more and more legitimate each and every day, shattering traditional perceptions of what constitutes a sport. Or does it? Let’s break it down – what is a ‘sport’?
Sports traditionally have been thought to require a degree of physical exertion. There really isn’t much of a case to make for eSports here – although to be fair it does require a degree of stamina to sit in front of a screen for 15 hours at a time regularly. But if this is really a crucial criterion, one that must be fulfilled in order to legitimize an activity into a sport, then please can someone explain to me the discrepancy in physical activity between computer gaming and snooker or darts. Yes, of course two wrongs don’t make a right, but nevertheless it does indicate the futility of denying eSports the right to consider itself a sport simply because its athletes do not live up to our traditional physical ideals.
Sports obviously require skill. Anyone who’s ever played a video game knows that there are inevitably good players and bad players, with the occasional bad player who thinks he or she is good mixed somewhere in between. What sepa- rates these groups is ultimately skill – your ability to react, to make winning decisions and to execute. According to BBC, eSports players can make more than 300 ‘actions’ per minute within a team framework, far more than the average human being, whilst other studies indicate that those who game frequently have markedly better mental agility and reflexes.
One of the reasons we enjoy playing sport is undeniably the unique experience of teamwork and strategy. As with any competi- tive activity, teamwork and strategy feature heavily in eSports, and is what separates the world-class teams from the average ones. In 2012, the Taipei Assassins pounced on Azubu Frost in the League of Legends World Champi- onships due to their tactical manoeuvres and unprecedented strategies. Teams dedicate en- tire months to practising and investigating their opponent’s weaknesses and strengths, not unlike what a football team or a rugby team would do to prepare for a tournament.
So maybe eSport has been a sport by definition all along – it’s just that people have been unwilling to acknowledge it as one, perhaps due to preconceived notions that computer gamers just cannot be athletes or simply that people should not rely on gaming for a legitimate living.
All I know is this: growing up, I always wanted to play games for a living but my par- ents, like most parents would, persistently told me that computer games were just a distraction. Yet here we are, living in an age where eSports are amongst the most followed sports globally, with athletes hauling in unbelievably early fortunes.
Times are changing.
Technology is extending its roots into the foundation of all that we do, and there is no reason to believe that sports should be an exception. So brace yourself – in a few decades, maybe we’ll all be tuning in every year to watch athletes display unparalleled levels of talent not on a pitch or in a gym, but behind a screen
