Many people still think that electronic sports (eSports) are not real sports. They just see it as pure entertainment. eSports are tournaments that only take place online on the computer. Real sport, on the other hand, involves physical activity. However, both sports can be played professionally.
The development of the Internet contributed significantly to the spread of eSports. In the course of this, even competition couches for eSports players have been developed. Normally, players of electronic sports compete as lone fighters or as group fighters in a team. Therein lies the parallel between real sports and non GamStop sports betting online. Here are another 5 reasons why eSports are real sports after all.
Physical Skills & Intellectual Skills
Real sports usually require a lot of training to be able to achieve top performance with your own body. This logically raises the question of why electronic sports are real sports, since they are obviously not directly related to physical activity and health awareness.
But eSports, just like real sports, requires a lot of practice and intellectual skills. At this point, reference is made to the game League of Legends.
This is a team-based game where extremely fast reaction times and strategic thinking are the most important things. The first-person shooter Counter-Strike requires a high level of hand-eye coordination.
This belongs to the ability to coordinate vision with hand movements, as is the case with ball sports, for example.
Electronic sports, like physical sports, are all about speed, ingenuity, and strategic thinking. Now let’s take chess as a sport. This is a respected sport in more than 100 countries. This sport comes very close to eSports, if we think about the seated position that the players adopt.
Exercise & Training
“Practice creates masters”. Don’t we all know this saying from our childhood? This proverb also applies to electronic sports. Professional eSports players usually train at least 8 hours a day. But some players play up to 14 hours a day. They must play constantly to be competitive. Just like in professional soccer, for example, players in the eSports team are replaced if they do not perform as required.
It is also important here to always be on the ball and to constantly develop.
Spectators & Audience
eSports competitions are similar to a soccer, basketball or ice hockey game. The number of spectators is now enormous. An eSports tournament with the most viewers in recent times was the tenth League of Legends World Championship in 2020. Over 3.2 million interested parties had registered for final tickets, of which only a good 6,000 could be selected due to the corona pandemic. The final was held at the Pudong Football Stadium in China and an average of 23 million people per minute watched the final. At peak times, almost 46 million viewers were on the screens.
eSports is therefore a spectator sport, just like real or traditional sport. Both sports have their own stadiums around the world and also their own commentators.
ALSO READ: Discovering the Joys of Being a Fan: Why People Love to Watch Sports
Grants
Yes, they do exist, scholarships for electronic athletes. eSports is currently growing at a rapid pace. There is even talk of eSports overtaking even traditional sports leagues in the future. This is probably also the reason why colleges and universities are becoming active when it comes to scholarships for eSports.
Robert Morris University is the first university to also offer scholarships for eSports. The scholarships are aimed primarily at players of the League of Legends. Students thus have the opportunity to finance up to 50% of their studies by claiming a scholarship.
Earning Money
One of the most important questions: Can you make money with eSports? The answer is quite clear: YES! An electronic sportsman earns money with what he does if he is good at it and shows the willingness to put in the necessary effort. So just ready to have a “work week” that includes a lot of hours. Most people see eSports as just a form of entertainment. Considering that this is a sport that can compete with traditional sports, it is only too easy to see that it is possible to make money from it.
ALSO READ: 5 Most Iconic and Best Cricket Games Ever Released
How Big Is the eSports World?
It’s the ‘secret billion-dollar industry’: professional video gaming also involves serious money. In 2016, the prize money for one leading championship – for insiders: The International Dota 2 Event – was $20.8 million. By comparison, the prize money for the men’s tennis players at Wimbledon and the US Masters Golf that same year was around $10 million and the Super Bowl winning team took home $5 million.
A striking fact is that 19 million of the almost 21 million is brought together by crowdfunding. The fans of the game Dota 2 all contribute to the prize money.
Twitch is comparable to Netflix: fans of the major video games find each other there and follow the game closely online. In 2015, that channel had no fewer than 100 million unique visitors. It is expected that there will be 145 million eSports fans in 2017. With this, for example, they already exceed the worldwide number of fans for ice hockey (94 million) and soon they will even come close to the number of supporters for American football (151 million fans). 13 million of them are themselves active in local or regional esports competitions, amateur or professional.
Why are tens of thousands of people watching an esports championship?
Madison Square Garden in New York, one of the most popular areas in the world, is completely sold out. Not for a pop concert, not for the NBA or NHL games, but for eSports fans who want to shout their favourite teams to victory.
The heroes are dressed in sports shirts and jeans, headphones are part of their standard equipment and so they compete with other teams behind screens.
If you watch any video on Twitch, you will see the same emotions that you see in supporters of major sporting events: disbelief, enthusiasm, madness, and tension. And the same picture with the players. That shared emotion, attending live an event that you normally only experience from your living room is part of the magic.
