My Family Loves Football. But Esports Feel Like Home
The love of sport can be isolating or unifying.
My family chat is full of football, as usual.
‘First win at Giant’s stadium,’ writes one brother. ‘They’re adjusting really well when there are big outs,’ writes the other. Their comments celebrate the intricacies of that great game: the players, the coaches, the umpires and the fans. I leave them all on read. Australian rules football just isn’t my game anymore.
My dad’s side of the family have always been rabid Carlton supporters. A few years ago, when my brothers and my Dad started watching footy together, it was a great excuse for us all to hang out. I would come along and try to get involved, piling onto the couch with my two brothers, dad in pride of place on the comfy armchair. I gave it a good go. I learned the players, watched the plays and got emotional about it, shouting at the screen here and there. We would share camaraderie and a few beers. It was bonding.
When the deeper conversations started, their passion for the game was obvious. They sat forward, staring intently, trading opinions onfiner points of the sport. I’d sit there with a smile plastered on my face and try to nod along, but the conversations that brought them to life left me feeling flat and a little lonely.
I just didn’t care enough about football to know the statistics, trades, injuries, or any other dimensions of the off-field life of the sport. Hoping to feel closer to them, I’d force myself to open up football websites occasionally, only to end up staring blankly, completely disengaged.
After the footy, I’d usually be the first to want to leave.
Then I discovered League of Legends. I’d played a little of the game before, but never really gotten into it. The first time I watched a professional match, it was overwhelming. There was a massive amount of information kicking around the screen, but the casters were engaging, and I didn’t care too much about the specifics. It was nice just to watch the characters run around and fight.
After a few matches, the ebb and flow of the game started to make sense to me. Leads could be built and thrown away. Major objectives sometimes had to be sacrificed for strategic necessity. Matches could turn on a knife’s edge. The precision required from the players was astounding. The fact that most of the action was centralised on their mouse arms didn’t matter to me at all.
It was clearly a sport. It had all of the trappings. Thrilling team play, a competitive professional scene, multiple leagues nurturing the talent of young players, international player trading, big money sponsorships, and huge viewer counts.
I started watching the European league regularly, during their regular season and in international events. I fell in love with the personalities, the interviews, and the drama. I found the casters and analysts hilarious and engaging, my kind of people. They understood and participated in the same internet culture that I did. For the first time, I knew what it was like to have the depth of feeling my family had for football.
I started following Fnatic, a team with a long history in esports terms. I watched all their games, and their wins or losses could make or break a weekend. There was no going back. I had found my sport.
But esports fandom is a lonely pursuit in Australia. Aussies are wary of esports for the most part, or just completely unaware of their existence. We’re so far away from the geographical epicentres of esports, and video games still get a bad run in the local news.
The Twitch chat alongside League streams became my community. They were always hilarious, a few thousand people dropping constant memes, gags and sledges. The LEC is often on in the middle of the night in Australia, but when I can watch it live I’ll type my own two cents into the chatbox and feel the warm fuzzy feelings that come with being a part of something, even as I watch my comment get swept away by copypasta in a few seconds.
In the first blush of fandom, I tried to get my dad and brothers into it too, but I gave up quickly. Passion for a sport is something you either feel, or you don’t. Forcing someone to enjoy League was never going to work — it has to be organic, with no pressure. Besides, they’ve already found their sport.
I have one IRL friend that watches it, and that’s enough. She’s younger than me, but just like with all internet culture, age and social differences don’t really matter that much. The internet at its best is organised by shared passions rather than by generation, country or class, and our passion is League.
My friend and I text chat on Discord during games, with messages in all-caps after big plays, and sad emojis when things aren’t going as we’d hoped. At least we don’t have to worry about umpires — the games adjudicate themselves.
I tried voice chatting with her and her pals once, but the chatter just didn’t feel right. I missed not being able to pay attention to the insights of the casters, and the shallow japery of the mob in chat. This is not something I would have ever said about football.
So I don’t get along to the family footy days anymore. I do miss the comfort of family and of our shared history. I don’t miss the football itself, and I can’t pretend to. Not now that I know what it feels like to really care.
When I see the family chat fill up with passion during a football game, I’ll smile. I’ll put whatever I’m doing aside, and take a moment to scan through the messages. I’m not reading them for the content. I review the evidence of my family’s frustrations, their insight and elation, and I feel close to them. I never reply, because what do I know about footy?
It’s enough to know that I’m one of their kind.
We all love sport.
