{"id":779,"date":"2017-10-30T15:46:18","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T15:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dipaola.me\/esports-videogiochi-alle-olimpiadi\/"},"modified":"2018-12-02T18:37:37","modified_gmt":"2018-12-02T18:37:37","slug":"esports-videogames-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dipaola.me\/en\/esports-videogames-olympics\/","title":{"rendered":"eSports – videogames at the Olympics and more"},"content":{"rendered":"

Will eSports go to the Olympics?<\/span> Apparently the Olympic Committee is thinking about it, and mentioned it in a recent statement<\/a> .<\/span> As foreseeable, such news sparked a mountain of reactions from commentators of a certain level<\/i> , many of whom, as usual, speak of topics they do not know at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I thought it could be a good idea to make some reflection about this topic – and maybe we could also give some details to those who, when hearing about video games at the Olympics, think about the children in their backseats, playing with their Gameboy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, just to let you know, we are talking about something like this:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"eSports\"
Final match of DOTA2 worldwide championship “The International” – KeyArena, Seattle (USA)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Wikipedia reports an estimated 226 million (repeat it slowly: two hundred and twenty-two million) eSports viewers during 2015. In 2013, the estimate number was 71.5 million, so if the trend is confirmed, 2016 and 2017 figures are going to be loud.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just to make a comparison, the SuperBowl viewers in the last five years have always settled around a hundred million, precisely 111.3 million for 2017 according to the CCN<\/a> .<\/span> This means that eSports has widely dubbed them two years ago already, and they are now aiming at the podium of the single most watched sport event in the world, the final match of soccer world cup (in 2014, more than 560 million viewers from home<\/a> ).<\/span> Obviously, things are different with the summer Olympic games, which make much bigger numbers (around 3 billion viewers) but last for weeks … and in any case, the last games of 2016 saw the figure drop after two growing editions<\/a> .<\/span>However, eSports is a worldwide phenomenon that attracts large numbers of audiences.<\/span> Someone should note it down.<\/span><\/p>\n

Allow me a side note: eSports \u00a0often have European teams, with participants from several EU countries competing together – something that in the “official” sports competitions for the time being has always been a dream of few ( or a nightmare for many \ud83d\ude00).<\/span> For example, the final of The International<\/a><\/i> World Championship\u00a0of\u00a0DOTA 2<\/a> game was won in 2017 by the European team Team Liquid<\/a> , which was born in 2000 around the StarCraft 2 video game. They also made a beautiful documentary about it:<\/span><\/p>\n