At the quadrennial Summer Olympic Games in Paris 2024, the race for medals among countries is becoming fiercer by the day. Meanwhile, the 142nd session of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will be held in France’s capital on July 23, prior to the grand opening of the Games.
In addition to general reporting on the Paris Games, the Committee also discussed the launch of a new esports event, the Olympic Esports Games, which is decided to be held at the next and future Olympic Games. The proposal by the IOC Executive Board (EB) was endorsed unanimously with the scope of adding esports as an official event at the next Olympics, and the first edition of the Olympic Esports Games will be held in Saudi Arabia next year.
IOC President Thomas Bach said: “This is truly a new era for the IOC. With the confirmation by the IOC Session of the creation of the Olympic Esports Games, we are keeping up with the pace of the digital revolution.”
Movement Toward Adding Esports for the Olympics Seeing Its Momentum
Last year the IOC set up the Esports Commission, announcing the plans to launch the aforementioned Esports Games. With the Olympic Esports Week held in Singapore, we can say that the IOC is now making full-scale moves toward the official introduction of Esports for the Olympics.
In recent years, we can see quite a few numbers of international Esports events held frequently for a variety of game titles, and the number of these events as well as the scales continue to grow. The Olympic Esports Week in Singapore presented 10 events for mixed-gender, including Fortnite as TPS (Third-person shooter) and Just Dance as a dance event. All of the events, in which more than 130 players from around the world competed, were streamed online and were a success, generating more than 6 million views in total.
“Esports is also very popular in the world of sports betting”, says Masa Sasajima, the editor of a Japanese bookmaker review site BETINJAPAN.COM. “Esports has great potential as a new form of sports entertainment with its high affinity to live streaming and comprehensibility.”
Saudi Arabia is also attracting attention for its positive attitude toward e-sports. The country will host the Esports World Cup 2024, the largest e-sports world championship in history with a prize fund of more than $60 million in 2024, while Saudi’s National Olympic Committee (NOC) has been partnered with the IOC for 12 years for organizing Olympic eSports Games. The games to be competed in the 2025 Olympic Esports Games are yet to be decided.
Esports Already Introduced At Smaller International Sports Events
Several regional sports events have already introduced Esports as official events, including the Asian Games held in Hangzhou, China in September 2023, which featured a wide range of game genres and popular titles such as League of Legends (MOBA), Dota 2 (MOBA), FIFA (soccer), and more. The Asian Games to be held in Nagoya, Japan in 2026 will also feature e-sports as an official event.
There are currently hundreds of game titles that could be considered Esports, but there are still some challenges down the road to adding Esports as an official event to the Olympics, such as the popularity of different games in different regions. Also, the popularity of Esports could differ from the level of countries’ economic situation. But ultimately the most interesting is to find out which titles to be introduced in the Olympic Esports Games 2025.
