Can eSports compete with traditional sports?

Fans of eSports can probably reel off all of the mocking comments they’ve received over the years, usually from people who think they are the first to have said them. These tend to go along the lines of “it’s not a real sport if you don’t have to run” or “I used to be good at Sonic the Hedgehog, I didn’t realize I was a sportsman”. It’s fine, they can laugh about it now, and eSports professionals can laugh later as they’re flying to the next multi-million dollar event.

However, with the new market that has been drawn in by eSports, there does come a question of whether DotA 2 and CS:GO can begin to compete with the more traditional forms of sport. Will Ninjas in Pyjamas ever take part in the Olympics? Will a mainstream TV audience ever tune in to watch the Major the way they do a World Cup? And does it really matter if the answer to these questions is “no”? It’s at least worth looking into how eSports is performing on a global scale before we dismiss the idea.

In many ways, it’s already competing

The mistake some people make is assuming that to compete with sports like soccer or tennis, eSports needs to be appearing on free-to-air national TV channels in the way those sports do. However, it’s worth asking yourself how many sports ever appear on those channels at the best of times. It’s estimated that 73million people watched a single LoL World Cup event, because we don’t watch sporting events in the same way we used to, and a lot of people just didn’t bother to count. That’s a viewership most sports would dream of attracting.

Bookmakers aren’t laughing

While there may be many traditional sports audiences that find the idea of esport as a real sport to be comical, the betting community doesn’t seem to be among them. Something like $8billion was bet on eSports in 2021, and that’s without counting the crypto casino coins that will have been bet, which will come to a fairly hefty amount. Many people are making the mistake of treating eSports like it’s trying to be a pursuit for the cable sports channels and the conventional sports crowds. But it is a sport that happens online in an age where people are increasingly digital natives. We bet online, we watch online, and we play online - so for some people, eSports may as well not exist.

Traditional sports stars think it’s fine

Once upon a time, the only intersection of traditional sports stars and gaming was when the pros had to do some contractually-obliged PR work for newly-released games and looked every bit as awkward as T1 would if you suddenly asked them to play soccer for South Korea (or to sing with BTS). But there is a substantial crossover now between sports pros and eSports players, and sometimes they’re even the same person - Lena Guldenpfennig plays soccer for RB Leipzig and is also part of their eSports team. You won’t find a team hotel without at least one room devoted to a gaming tournament - it could be FIFA or Madden, but it’s just as likely to be Fortnite or CS:GO.

Who cares if it competes?

Perhaps the key point to make, when the question is asked as to whether eSports can compete with traditional sports, is just that simple: who cares if it does compete? Lacrosse is never going to be as popular as the NFL, but you won’t find the Halifax Thunderbirds snapping their sticks and quitting the game. People are allowed to like more than one thing at a time, and it’s not as though you can’t be into eSports and soccer, or eSports and NFL, as the above points make clear. So, although there is plenty of information to prove the popularity of eSports, it should also be remembered that it’s not a numbers game. It’s about a sport that people enjoy playing and watching, and that’s enough.

It will probably come as a surprise to some - including a lot of eSports fans - but its widespread acceptance has come comparatively quickly and been impressively widespread. It may well have been tougher to be a kid at school in the US who loved soccer, or one in the UK who followed baseball, than it is for the same kids now who watch eSports. Mainstream opinion in the general public may take time to catch up, but it’s not like eSports is going away any time soon.