the future of sport
Notwithstanding that within only a generation the digital revolution has transformed society beyond anyone’s prediction, I’m delighted to report that, to me at least, sport remains true to its old staples of kicking a ball of various size and shape either between two sticks, over two sticks or hitting it into a small hole and over a boundary rope with said stick. So, it was with some alarm that, along with other insomniacs, my eyes were half-opened early this morning to a world I truly did not know existed: eSports.
The red-eye broadcast covered the development of three massively expensive hi-tech F1 simulators in Maclaren’s glamorous HQ just down the road in Woking. With all the money swishing around Grand Prix motor racing I can hear you cry there’s no surprise in that but what may pique your interest is that the building of these complex machines has precious little to do with lowering false-patriot & tax-swerving Lewis Hamilton’s lap times and everything to do with the factory growing an online eSport presence and community. Poor Lewis hardly gets a look-in on the machines and Maclaren made it clear that the next generation of both driver and fan will come not from behind the wheel of a go-kart but from a games console.
Broadly speaking eSports consists of a variety of video games, for which fast fingers and a manipulative mind help you succeed. Some games are of the racing kind, others traditionally team based and still more of the disturbing shoot ‘em up style. Already, the top football clubs (Man City, Paris St Germain, Valencia, Real Madrid) have signed Fifa gaming stars on million pound deals as they compete in a number of high profile international tournaments. With over 100 million active players, one particular game, League of Legends, appears to lead the way in eSports: it’s a strategy game set in a fantasy arena where teams of, three or five players build & destroy towers and kill opponents en route. Apparently, it can take several years of playing to fully grasp its nuances and intricacies and, personally, I’m as baffled as my ol’ dears probably were when I used to don KISS make-up to live gigs in the 70s.
The size of the market is truly phenomenal: revenues this year will top £365m and the global audience will exceed 400m. One recent event in Poland was attended by a record-breaking (cue Roy Castle’s ‘Dedication’ trumpet blast!) 173,000 real people and this year’s Intel Extreme Masters was viewed by 36m participants. Just as with traditional sports, fans follow stars and teams, watch events and matches, attend cup-finals and certainly put the money where their microphone are. Think football is the only global sport? Think again.
But is it sport? Having enjoyed many a lounge bar argument over the merits, or otherwise, of darts and snooker vs squash and marathon running, the debate now turns to that of eSports. There’s no denying the participants, many of whom play/practice for over twelve or fifteen hours a day, certainly put the hours in and success is determined as much by focus and concentration as it is dexterity. Many view the games as being as complex as chess, but with several players moving the pieces at the same time, and this hasn’t been lost on the international sports charade that is the Olympics.
Currently with its own identity crisis deepening, the Olympics, rocked by doping scandal after doping scandal, is undoubtedly trying to reinvent itself with greater appeal to a largely disinterested youth. Our own 2012 London Olympics, though intended to ‘inspire a generation’ to take-up a sport and get active, saw the number of people playing a sport or exercising at least once a week, fall not rise, and currently over 90% of kids do not get the recommended amount of physical exercise. Some legacy. Prancing horses and modern pentathlon are obviously not for them and BMX, beach volleyball, baseball and skateboarding highlight the direction the IOC are moving towards. With its massive revenues & audiences it’s only a matter of time before the Olympics seize the opportunity with eSports. Proof of this can be seen in eSports’ planned ‘exhibition status’ in next year’s Asian Games, the world’s second largest multisport event, prior to its full inclusion in 2022. Make no bones about it, eSports is coming to podium near you in the very near future.
In the future digital era, eSports will not merely be established as a major sport but it shows all the characteristics of becoming the most popular and beloved of all sports. I thank my lucky stars I’ll be too old to get involved and will have to continue to satisfy my competitive urges by chasing a small black ball around a too-large court and then taking to the pool in a very shoddy display of something Mark Spitz used to do very well indeed. In my book, if you’re not hot, sweaty and trying to impress a member of the opposite sex, it just isn’t cricket!
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