Virtually any sport would be devastated to hear that it’d been quietly put aside by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). But when first reported by the Japanese site Kyodo News, the esports community largely responded to this U-turn with apathy.
While presented as little more than a sudden structural shift by incumbent president Kirsty Coventry (who favors established sports), it is a perfect cap to almost a decade of painful flip-flopping.
Originally, the esports industry was invited en masse to speak with the Olympic Movement, only for almost all relevant stakeholders to be excluded from discussions. The term esports itself was, for a time, aggressively avoided in favor of “virtual sports,” before the pretense was dropped and a dedicated Olympic Esports Games brand was proudly ratified. Its planned inaugural outing folded just over a year later.
It’s easy to forget that this was all in pursuit of attracting new audiences to Olympic spectacles. Like so many doomed ventures into esports, much can be blamed on the lofty hype that competitive gaming commanded in the 2010s. Its younger digital audience and rapid rise (conveniently tied to the simultaneous emergence of online streaming platforms and the free-to-play gaming model) cloaked structural problems and meager revenue that still plague the industry to this day. But the issues that were the bane of the Olympic Movement – violent content, commercial interests, and IP rights – were visible from space.
“Esports doesn’t need the Olympics, it’s the other way round” became something of a mantra, but that depends on your perspective. From a product fit perspective, any popular esports title watched today would feel out of place if directly placed in the Summer or Winter Games. Casuals would be lost, with little more than national pride attracting gaming audiences to a broadcast more sanitized than they’re used to. Whatever value it would have as a sports event will now largely be filled by the Esports Nations Cup.
IEM PyeongChang was an Olympic-branded StarCraft II tournament, held in conjunction with the 2018 Winter Games. Photo credit: IOC/ESL
But ultimately, it’s the intricacies of the global sports governing system and the politics therein that made even a dedicated esports Olympics a Herculean task.
To give you an idea, here’s a brief recap of this back-and-forth saga:
- July 2018: Having previously agreed that esports could be seen as a sporting activity, and even attaching its rings to an exhibition StarCraft II tournament, the IOC hosted an esports forum in Lausanne. As the opener, then esports team owner Rick Fox spoke on stage with the respective CEOs of Riot Games, Blizzard Entertainment, and ESL.
- December 2018: At its annual summit, the IOC was quick to clarify that the inclusion of esports as a medal event was premature, and though it denounced games “incompatible with Olympic values,” it identified legitimate issues with the commercial and fragmented nature of the industry.
- December 2019: At the next summit, a report from the Esports and Gaming Liaison Group (which, it must be said, was woefully lacking in esports- or gaming-knowledgeable persons) led to the embrace of “electronic games simulating sports.” This influenced the “virtual sports” moniker that the IOC would religiously stick to until…
- June 2023: Following a 2021 pilot event, the “Olympic Esports Series” was held in Singapore, with the main program entirely filled with sports simulation games. Most attracted peak audiences in the low thousands, or even hundreds. The most-watched event was actually a showcase Rocket League match between Karmine Corp and Gen.G, attracting 22,000 peak viewers (according to Esports Charts).
- September 2023: The IOC set up an esports commission (one of its specialized advisory bodies), with one of its goals being the establishment of an Olympic Esports Games. It can now only be seen on an archived version of the IOC’s website.
- February 2025: The Olympic Esports Games, to be run in partnership with Saudi Arabia’s National Olympic Committee (NOC), is delayed until 2026. The partnership ended, as reported previously by TEA, due to differences between the Saudi NOC/Esports Foundation’s intentions for the event and what would be permitted under the Olympic Charter.
That last point refers to the constitution-esque document underpinning Olympism, first published in 1908. It governs the organization, actions and functioning of the entire Olympic Movement. Most crucial are the rules governing which entities the IOC can recognize as globally responsible for a sport; a right granted exclusively to international federations (we’ll return to that in a moment).
But unique to the esports dilemma is the explicit goal of Olympism to promote “a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” This is the crux of the violent content debate.
IOC members have already heard the counterpoints: that combat sports are a thing, or that some Olympic disciplines (javelin, archery) come from lethal arts. But even ignoring that, it’s never been clear where the IOC draws the line. Guns, blood, terrorists…OK, sorry Counter-Strike. But the Narnia-esque fantasy of League of Legends, or the relatively tame sci-fi warfare of StarCraft? Less obvious. That says nothing about phrases like “double kill” or “killing spree,” which to remove would equate to cultural erasure for gamers.
The resulting poor audience levels for the simulated sports-laden events (which the IOC tried to gaslight with irrelevant impressions metrics) speak to the fact that modern games don’t emerge from a vacuum. Multiplayer online battle arenas (MOBAs) draw from the combined lineage of strategy and roleplaying games (including board, tabletop, and miniature), while first-person shooters (FPS) boast almost identical control schemes and layouts to predecessors from decades ago. The unique design and monetization choices of individual developers do matter, but the unbroken thread of games as a medium could not be further from the shameless cash grab that many “virtual sports” ended up being.
During my time as a policy advisor in the gaming industry, I heard that an IOC member once said that even undeniably safe games like Street Fighter and Rocket League were deemed “too unrealistic” to be considered Olympic events. At the end of the day, it’s all about encouraging participation in existing sports, which explains why international federations were literally pitching small game studios to digitize theirs. The idea that IOC members are just not interested in indulging video games doesn’t fully ring true, when you consider that the Olympic Esports Games project was unanimously approved prior to the 2024 Paris Games. Literally, no nay-sayers.
As Takashi Kiso explained in his recent social media essay, the topic of rulemaking and publisher oversight was the largest insurmountable hurdle to licensing video games in an Olympic setting. It must be repeated that there is no international esports governing body, and as I outlined in my previous op-ed, the classification of esports as sport is often less for superficial status, and more for funding and non-profit recognition.
While there wasn’t exactly broad enthusiasm for an esports Olympics, the pursuit of one had real policy consequences. National Olympic Committees (NOCs) from South Korea to Malaysia and Poland to Kenya have recognized esports, and in countries where esports is fully classified as a sport, the promise that an Olympic Esports Games was just around the corner played a major part in the lobbying process.
Contrary to almost everything above, the Asian Games will feature esports as a medal event for the second time later this year. Although this multi-sport event is IOC-sanctioned, it is not bound by every letter of the charter; thus, games like League of Legends, Honor of Kings, and PUBG Mobile (the latter with significant modifications) are all returning, with national dream teams. For now, this will remain the blueprint of what the IOC could not manage, including strong viewership and audience attendance; a testament to the power of differing cultural attitudes and tolerances.
Since the news first broke, Kirsty Coventry herself clarified at an IOC press conference that her office’s work on esports was “very much alive.” Apparently, “working with an expert,” she will present a new plan to the executive board sometime after June. That’s promising for anyone who hopes this particular Olympic flame can be kept alive, but the fundamental mismatches between video game products and sports politics won’t be solved in the next few months.
Whatever happens, at least we’ll always have “virtual taekwondo.”