Are eSports Real Sports? [Podcast]

Okay, let me be the first to admit, that when Derek came to me with a podcast idea about eSports being “real” sports, I was ready to throw them under the bus. But after a bit of research and looking into the meteoric rise of competitive gaming, I’m ready to concede that eSports can fall under the “sports” umbrella. (Hey, if people can classify chess, poker, and NASCAR as sports, then I think gaming can find its own niche.

Here is the League of Legends video I referred to in the podcast that shows sport and TV analysts badmouth eSports intermixed with footage of packed arenas cheering on professional gamers. It’s not quite “Rudy” or “Remember the Titans”, but I will say it got me jazzed up about League of Legends, which I’ve never actually played.

Let’s get to the common definition of sports and eSports:

• sport: [spôrt] noun – an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.
• eSport: [E-spôrt] noun – a multiplayer video game played competitively for spectators, typically by professional gamers.

At first glance I was ready to write of that eSports are not a sport because they don’t involve physical exertion. But hold up, if you’ve ever seen professional gamers, real ones, they are exerting a lot on mental energy and they are sweating. Did you know the professional StarCraft players can average 300 actions per minute at any given time. And, during particularly intensive battles, their numbers can go up to 600. That’s 10 actions every second. But comparing mental exertion like this, to physical exertion done by a 320-pound defensive tackle is like comparing apples to oranges…no, it’s more like comparing apples to a car tire. Let’s just say that, like poker and chess, eSports are mind-based sports with limited physical activity.

In fact, some of the modern gaming leagues are starting to be run just like other sports leagues with big-name owners, schedules, and minimum salaries. ad sponsorship. (Some Overwatch League franchises are selling for 20-60 million dollars each!) There are even talks about having forms of eSports included in the Olympics in the near future.

What are your thoughts, are we ready to consider eSports “real” sports?

Competitive gaming has come a long way since “The Wizard.”

Fun fact: The closest I ever game to competitive gaming was winning my store’s Blockbuster Video Game Championship in the early 1990s. Oh, how the mighty have fallen…