The Olympics Are Against Adding E-Sports For An Unsurprising Reason

If you were hoping to see eSports make their Olympic debut in the coming years, you might want to transfer that hope towards something else. You’re far more likely to get the original, unedited versions of Star Wars or a third Half-Life game than see eSports on the grand sports stage, at least in the form that it is most popular.

According to Polygon, the organizers for the Paris Olympics in 2024 had mentioned that eSports could become one of the many events to be introduced to the games. But according to International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach, there’s a catch to any possible addition according to an interview in the South China Morning Post:

“We want to promote non-discrimination, non-violence, and peace among people,” he told the Morning Post. “This doesn’t match with video games, which are about violence, explosions and killing. And there we have to draw a clear line.”

https://twitter.com/SteveButts/status/903301892343599106

If that sounds like an argument straight out of the ’90s, you’re not alone. Plenty of people seemed to take that classification as the IOC being out of touch with what makes competitive gaming interesting to so many. Game streaming is beating out Netflix and other platforms for eyeballs on the internet and according to Sports Illustrated, the International DOTA 2 Championship is the richest eSports tournament in the world with a purse of $20,770,460 and each winning 5-person team splitting a grand prize of $9,139,002. They compare it to The Masters, noting the $20 million purse is double what the golfers are playing for and the latest winner Danny Willett, walked away with $1.8 million.

It might sound odd, but eSports are real and the players treat it as such. But for the Olympics, “violence” is a problem. As Polygon points out, this would rule out the very popular DOTA 2 and League of Legends. It would also kill any chance of seeing a competitive shooting game on the Olympic stage, leaving only sports simulations according to Bach:

“So if ever somebody is competing at playing football virtually or playing other sports virtually, this is of high interest. We hope that, then, these players are really delivering sports performance. If [fans] at the end would even play the sports in the real world, we would even be more happy”

Now this doesn’t mean the door is shut entirely on Olympic eSports, but it does mean that any interest it could’ve generated is out the window. Watching someone play FIFA or Madden just doesn’t have the same effect of watching one of the more popular eSports games out there. Luckily, judging by the numbers and all the people enjoying competitive gaming, eSports doesn’t need to be at the Olympics. It is doing just fine on its own.

(Via Polygon / South China Morning Post / Sports Illustrated)