My Thoughts on Esports
Esports have been a booming industry in recent years since the rise of popularity in watching and streaming video games. Sports complexes across the world hold these huge events which have cash prizes ranging from hundreds of thousands of dollars up to the millions. These competitions are battled out throughout a season not unlike a regular sports season. Teams sign and recruit the best players for their team that complement each other so that they can achieve victory.
A great example of one of the most successful Esports business’, is the Overwatch League based around the global hit Overwatch created by Blizzard Entertainment. Overwatch is a first person shooter video game where you pick “heroes” with different skills, abilities, and weapons. You play different game modes with two teams of six to complete different goals to win matches. These goals range from moving a payload cart to the enemy’s base, taking different objectives zones around the map, and a bunch of other minigame type modes. Overwatch was, as I stated before, created by Blizzard entertainment who made games like Diablo, StarCraft, and the renowned and classic game World of Warcraft. Blizzard has made plenty of Role Playing Games in the past and branched out and created this hero shooter that became an instant hit with the gaming community. Trying to keep their profits going from this hit, Blizzard created the Overwatch League, the official league for competitive Overwatch players to compete on a global scale. The league operates and works much like any other sports league, with the teams meeting at different complexes around the world and competing to make it to the playoffs. During the playoffs their are a few stages that teams must go through until the two best teams from each divisions face off to become the champions of the Overwatch League. See just like any other sports team or league that you would usually watch.
Now for the real question, are Esports a “real” sport? Everyone who is asked this question will have their own opinion and answer to it. As for me I don’t think Esports are real sports. For starters I think for a sport to really be a sport it has to be physical. All sports have some sort of physical activity that makes them fun and challenging. Esports lack the physical aspect that really make up sports. When anyone thinks of sports they think of football, basketball, and baseball. All of these sports appeal to different people just like Esports appeal to different people. I’m not saying Esports aren’t hard or challenging, because these are the best people in the world at what they do, just like pros in the NFL and NBA. I enjoy both sports and video games because they give a different type of challenge than the other can provide. Sports give me that adrenaline rush that comes with a hard and competitive game. Video games are more of a relaxed environment that I can chill out and play while still being tough and challenging. Both give me the feeling of being accomplished after finishing a hard game or beating a tough level.
My personal opinion of Esports of course differs with that of others, so before I go on, please do not be offended this is just my personal opinion on Esports, and the branding issues that have been going on with these leagues.
As the Esport franchises keep on growing and getting bigger, so will the attention and publicity that they will receive. Right now, Esports is starting to get on public television on certain T.V. networks. Before these networks made deals with these franchises, the tournaments and events were on gaming streaming sites. Twitch is a huge gaming streaming site that anyone can use to watch gamers play their favorite video games. The streamers on this site are paid by donations and sponsorship deals. The Esport leagues get a lot of their money from these donations. Most Esports leagues have sponsorship deals with big tech company such as Dell, and HP. These tech corporations provide sponsorship deals by making the player use their computers to play their games on. This is very similar to athletic wear companies providing gear to players, as long as they wear it and promote it. Once you start to look at it, the similarities between these Esports leagues and sports leagues start to add up. In the modern world everything in the sports world is driven by sponsorships.
On the topic of sponsorships, if we take a look at the UEFA soccer league jerseys, they have nothing but sponsorships in big logos on them. The team’s logo is barely there on the chest, because it’s being overshadowed by the big sponsor on the front of the jerseys. This is just one of many examples of the over branding that has consumed the major sports leagues across the world. Why i’m bringing this up is because Esports leagues are going through the same thing. They have sponsors who pay for ads which appear throughout the streams, announcers say the brands name every time they cut away to a commercial break and a nice little line that makes that company sound like they are “the best in the business” (that they were payed to say). These corporations take away the fun out of watching these sports with these ads and huge logos to promote themselves instead of promoting the game and the players.
To sum up my thoughts on the Esports industry, and provide a quality conclusion here, I do not think Esports should be considered an actual sport because of the lack of physical activity, but both are equally challenging in their own diverse ways. Big corporations are stealing the air time that should be going to the players and using it to promote themselves and are taking away from the culture that sports are surrounded by. Even though sports and Esports are two completely different activities, they share the same problems that are ruining the fun in watching them.
