Opin­ion: Are Es­ports Con­sid­ered Sports?

MISHAWAKA—The emerg­ing pop­u­lar­ity of elec­tronic sports, short­ened to es­ports, has led a few peo­ple to call into ques­tion the va­lid­ity of the field be­ing la­beled a “sport.” The trep­i­da­tion is un­der­stand­able; gam­ing is seen as lit­tle more than a hobby, and an un­healthy one at that, by so­ci­ety at large. Com­bine that with es­ports hav­ing been around for less than a decade, and it is dif­fi­cult enough to fig­ure out what qual­i­fies as an eS­port, much less a sport in gen­eral. While this is­sue of de­f­i­n­i­tion has not stopped the rapid in­crease in pop­u­lar­ity, it will likely in­crease the num­ber of peo­ple who crit­i­cize the na­ture of es­ports. I per­son­ally be­lieve es­ports has as much right to be called a sport as chess and poker. 

To demon­strate this de­scrip­tion is­sue is not only aca­d­e­mic, we will travel to the mys­ti­cal pages of a dic­tio­nary, Mer­riam-Web­ster to be spe­cific. The Mer­riam-Web­ster Dic­tio­nary de­fines “sport” as “a source of di­ver­sion: recre­ation.” I doubt any­one in the past two decades would not call video games “recre­ation,” and I put even less faith in them re­fus­ing to call them “a source of di­ver­sion.” Far be it from me to only take the ad­vice of one ex­pert. Per­haps Dic­tio­nary.com has some­thing dif­fer­ent. “An ath­letic ac­tiv­ity re­quir­ing skill or phys­i­cal prowess and of­ten of a com­pet­i­tive na­ture” posits the web­site. Video games have cer­tainly been com­pet­i­tive since their cre­ation: the premise of Pong is to out­per­form ei­ther a com­puter or an­other player. Though they might not ne­ces­si­tate tremen­dous phys­i­cal prowess, sev­eral video games in the usual es­ports lineup cer­tainly re­quire skill. These as­ser­tions might not be enough to sway every­body un­for­tu­nately. That is why I am mak­ing one last stop at the In­ter­na­tional Olympic Com­mit­tee, which rec­og­nizes an ac­tiv­ity as a sport if it is both prac­ticed by men in over 75 coun­tries on four con­ti­nents and by women in over 40 coun­tries in three con­ti­nents and over­seen by a global or­ga­ni­za­tion that is not a gov­ern­ment. I do con­cede es­ports have not reached this thresh­old, but it is worth not­ing that a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of coun­tries al­ready have es­ports leagues, and the num­ber only shows signs of grow­ing. 

Those against re­fer­ring to es­ports as proper sports typ­i­cally cite the “elec­tronic” por­tion of the term ren­der­ing the whole as an oxy­moron. Many peo­ple have told me es­ports are not proper sports be­cause “you are just sit­ting there” or “they are just a work­out for your thumbs.” Though con­de­scend­ing in phras­ing, their con­cerns are still valid. The more health-fo­cused peo­ple posit it is un­healthy to put in as much time sit­ting down and star­ing at a screen as an­other ath­lete would put in run­ning laps, do­ing drills, or any other phys­i­cal ac­tiv­ity. These two groups are just ex­hibit­ing dif­fer­ent it­er­a­tions of the same ar­gu­ment: es­ports lack the phys­i­cal­ity of a tra­di­tional sport. 

I do con­cede es­ports tour­na­ments and prac­tices do not con­tain as much ki­netic ac­tiv­ity as the game of soc­cer. How­ever, es­ports, like any sport, fea­ture a dif­fer­ent kind of phys­i­cal­ity ex­hib­ited in a dif­fer­ent way than oth­ers. The ideal foot­ball player is built quite dif­fer­ently than the ideal base­ball player. While it pales in com­par­i­son to dunk­ing in bas­ket­ball, es­ports ath­letes have to raise their Ac­tions Per Minute (APM) and de­crease their re­ac­tion times. To do this, play­ers need to stay in a rel­a­tively healthy phys­i­cal con­di­tion; an ex­er­cise reg­i­men and a good diet keep these com­peti­tors at the top of their game. With­out it, they risk los­ing their edge, and the abil­ity to com­pete. To put it sim­ply, if play­ers can­not main­tain their skill, men­tal and phys­i­cal, they can­not com­pete. There­fore, es­ports does re­quire more phys­i­cal­ity than the dis­in­ter­ested ob­server would ex­pect. That phys­i­cal­ity is sim­ply not as vis­i­ble as in a more ki­netic sport. 

An­other preva­lent ar­gu­ment is the pres­ence of en­ter­tain­ment value in es­ports. Are they vi­able spec­ta­tor sports? A lot of the en­ter­tain­ment value in video games is found in the play­ing thereof. The medium it­self re­lies on a high level of in­ter­ac­tion with the sub­ject, en­abling every­thing on screen to hap­pen. Fur­ther still, play­ing games with friends is of­ten when video games are at their most en­joy­able, so watch­ing strangers play them seems an­ti­thet­i­cal. Watch­ing es­ports, as com­pared to tra­di­tional sports, sim­ply puts an­other layer be­tween the spec­ta­tor and the ac­tion: tra­di­tional sports see the play­ers in the game, cre­at­ing the spec­ta­cle for the au­di­ence, whereas es­ports play­ers are con­trol­ling the game for the au­di­ence. 

To put forth that ar­gu­ment would make any sports fan a hyp­ocrite. Of­ten­times, your av­er­age foot­ball game viewer is not a pro­fes­sional foot­ball player. That is to say, if two teams of view­ers were to com­pete, the re­sult­ing game would not be as ex­cit­ing as one put on by pro­fes­sion­als. In much the same way, the av­er­age es­ports viewer is not a pro and likely could not repli­cate the spec­ta­cle in a tour­na­ment. It is fun to watch peo­ple who are good at some­thing be good at some­thing, es­pe­cially when they are com­pet­ing against some­one equally good. A base­ball team ex­e­cut­ing a triple play would be just as ex­cit­ing for their fans as watch­ing an Over­watch team pull off a team kill for their fans. 

In terms of fi­nances and view­er­ship, es­ports are some of the most vi­able sports out there. Sev­eral uni­ver­si­ties across the U.S. have col­le­giate teams, of­fer­ing play­ers schol­ar­ships to play com­pet­i­tively. There are also the nu­mer­ous ex­ist­ing pro­fes­sional leagues stretch­ing from coast to coast of­fer­ing cash prizes in the sex­tu­ple dig­its. South Bend has in­vested mil­lions of dol­lars in cre­at­ing an es­ports arena in its down­town area, as the ex­pected re­turn is more than enough to turn a profit. In fact, the in­dus­try has been grow­ing so quickly, ex­perts pre­dict view­er­ship to sur­pass that of sports like golf, hockey, and even base­ball in a mat­ter of years. If that does not demon­strate a mar­ket for watch­ing peo­ple “work­ing out their thumbs,” then I do not know what does. 

At this point, es­ports are far from be­com­ing as uni­ver­sal as soc­cer, but the de­f­i­n­i­tion of the word shows they are, ob­jec­tively, just as much a sport. Even if some peo­ple still con­tend the point on the ba­sis of de­f­i­n­i­tion, the strides that have been made in the in­dus­try in the last decade show that it cer­tainly de­serves the ti­tle on a fi­nan­cial ba­sis alone. No mat­ter the opin­ion of the spec­ta­tor, es­ports is gain­ing more and more pop­u­lar­ity, and, with that, more and more peo­ple who ac­knowl­edge it for the sport that it is. 

Works Cited 

“How Are Sports Cho­sen for the Olympics?” Edited by Ed­i­tors of En­cy­clo­pe­dia Bri­tan­nica , En­cy­clopæ­dia Bri­tan­nica, En­cy­clopæ­dia Bri­tan­nica, Inc., 2020, www.bri­tan­nica.com/​story/​how-are-sports-cho­sen-for-the-olympics#:~:text=The%20Olympic%20Char­ter%20indi­cates%20that,coun­tries%20and%20on%20three%20­con­ti­nents. 

“Sport.” Dic­tio­nary.com, Dic­tio­nary.com, 2012, www.dic­tio­nary.com/​browse/​sport?s=t. 

“Sport.” Mer­riam-Web­ster, Mer­riam-Web­ster, In­cor­po­rated, 10 Aug. 2020, www.mer­riam-web­ster.com/​dic­tio­nary/​sport.