Technology is rapidly evolving like our mobile devices, cars, household items, and more. Electronic sports, also known as eSports, include the FIFA series, Madden, NBA 2k, Pro Evolution Soccer and Rocket League are expanding its audience base every day. Its popularity will only go up from here, and if one disagrees then they obviously haven’t seen Wall-E. While eSports is on the uprising, I, personally, don’t think that it is considered a sport.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, sports can be defined as, “An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.” Electronic sports don’t involve much “physical exertion” so much as it requires more mental exertion than anything.
Though, this doesn’t change the fact that the global eSports industry, market and audience biggest thing to hit the electronic medium since its launch. With its expansion, different ways to approach eSports has been created to enhance the audience’s experience with their games like condenser microphones, gaming headsets, keyboards, and more. These items sound like regular items by name, but it’s not to a regular eSports professional. They will go to any lengths to bring their games to life, even if it’s buying a $200 keyboard or a $300 headset.
Because of eSports’ growing market, I think they will overshadow conventional sports eventually. Since everything in today’s society is very much technology based that eSports is right around the corner trying to catch up to the traditional sports. “In 2015, Amazon, announced that it had successfully acquired Twitch, a live streaming platform, for $970 million and has diligently promoted eSports as the main selling point of its platform ever since,” Andrew Carroll, tech blogger, said. “Reports have highlighted that by 2020, eSports will overtake the NBA’s 400 million fans, reaching closer to 500 million.”
Despite of the records and its growing revenue, I don’t think that eSports is deemed a sport. However, this controversial topic doesn’t seem to raise concerns in the eSports community. They’re just like any community of fans out there, so we shouldn’t categorize them because they share no similarities with real sports aside from the game itself. We shouldn’t compare these two activities for their characteristic traits, but we should just support them for what they do.
As for the demand to have fair journalism coverages, I think, like any topics or stories, we should shed light on eSports if they are news and relevant. Traditional sports are covered more in the news because there is always something that goes on within the industry. I think the same treatment should be given to eSports as well, because we have to change people’s mindset concerning eSports being just video games. We, as a society, shouldn’t treat the eSports community any difference than the traditional sports community, or any community with a fan base, for that matter. If it didn’t bring people joy, eSports wouldn’t still be around, let alone being a rapidly growing industry, today. At the end of the day, whether eSports is considered a sport or not, we shouldn’t reflect too much on it but look forward, at least that’s what the average eSport fan is doing.
References
Young, H. (2016, May 31). ESports: Is pro video gaming a sport? Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/31/sport/esports-is-professional-gaming-a-sport/index.html
Carroll, A. (2018, April 10). Are E-Sports set to Take Over Traditional Sports? Retrieved from https://irishtechnews.ie/are-e-sports-set-to-take-over-traditional-sports/
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