The Overwatch League, which is an esport event centered around the game of Overwatch, draws in over 10 million viewers every year. This is an important statistic because most sports in the Olympics, like water polo, for example, don’t get as many viewers usually. This is one of the reasons why esports should be in the Olympic, but there are others.
Esports should be considered for the Olympics because they are physically and mentally demanding. The professional Smash Bros player, Hungrybox said, “To be a sport you need to exercise the player’s mind and body.” A traditional sport like basketball or football needs the practice to get better and maintain that skill. This is the schedule of an average esports player according to Team Liquid, an esports team:
8:00 am Wake up
8:30 am – 10:30 am Gym, shower, breakfast (One hour at the Gym)
10:30 am – 11:30 am Video Review of most recent game
12:00 pm – 3:00 pm Scrimmage against other pros
3:00 pm – 4:00 pm Break
4:00 pm – 7:00 pm Scrimmage against other pros
8:00 pm – 12:00 am Solo Practice
This adds up to about 70 hours of gaming per week. On paper that doesn’t seem too bad, but if you put it into to practice, it’s very physically demanding. 10 hours of gaming per day, while having breaks in between, is still very dangerous. Because of the constant movement of your hands you would most likely get carpal tunnel or a wrist cramp.
Mentally, it’s also the same with esports, but probably even more so, because of updates, patches, etc. You have to constantly adapt to the video game if you want to keep up. Take Fortnite for example. Fortnite is a Battle Royale game created by Epic Games. The idea of it is that you and 99 other players drop from the battle bus and go around the map, looking for guns so you can kill everyone else and be the last one standing, or you could play with up to 3 of your friends in Squads. Epic Games constantly adds new guns and then removes some so often that you, as the player, have to constantly adapt. Mix in the building aspect, and you have a very competitive game.
Esports should also be in the Olympics because they are accessible. For example, you would probably not see a person who is an amputee playing football, but an amputee could still become a professional esports player. For example, Ewok is a 13 year old deaf professional Fortnite player. Right now, she is in the World Cup and is in FaZe Clan, a professional esports team. So esports could be an event in the Olympics and Paralympics, and disabled players could go to either one or both. They still need to do the things other pros need to do, like scrimmaging and doing solo practice.
Now, what are the chances of esports making it into the Olympics? Pretty high, actually. The International Olympics Committee, or IOC, already recognized esports as an actual sport and is doing a trial run for it at this very moment. All that’s left is for more countries to sign on. The U.S, China, Great Britain, and North and South Korea, among others, have already signed on to the petition for esports to be in the Olympics. All they need is a couple more signatures and for esports to go through the rules and regulations.
If esports does make it into the Olympics, what would the rules be? First of all, the teams will not be separated by gender because there are no biological advantages They will get paid the same. There will be the amount of people required for each video game on the teams. For example, Overwatch will be six people, and Fortnite (with Squads) will be four people. The top games that will be in the Olympics will be games like Overwatch, League of Legends, Super Smash Bros, and the aforementioned Fortnite. The reason why these games are likely is that they are team sports (in the case of Fortnite can be) that require all lot of skill to master and adapt to. Super Smash Bros is an exception to the team sport rule.
Esports have come a long way. The first esports event happened in 1972 when students at Stanford University played the game “Spacewar” for a year-long subscription for Rolling Stones magazine. The first official video game tournament happened in 1980, where they played Space Invaders. And in 2024 in Paris I am confident that esports will be in the Olympics. It’s bound to happen eventually because of the amount of people who follow it so passionately.