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The Roar

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eSports at the Olympics is a matter of time, not opinion

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Rio Olympics closing ceremony (Photo: AAP)
Editor
24th August, 2016
11

It would have been unthinkable half a century ago that skateboarding would ever be in the Olympic Games.

Yet we have the grey-haired Olympic top dog Thomas Bach coming out and saying that the old ‘build it and they will come’ theory doesn’t apply to the youth of today.

Instead, the International Olympic Committee are using the ‘go to their waterhole’ approach for the Tokyo Games of 2020.

Baseball. Karate. Okay. Sports steeped in history and tradition.

Surfing? Somewhat. Been around a while, but what used to be the reserve of beach stoners has shot brazenly into the mainstream. Kelly Slater the greatest athlete of all time, anybody?

Skateboarding? Sports climbing? Now you’re talking to the youth…

Though you’re opening up a whole leather pouch of issues when it comes to drug testing, you can’t say the IOC aren’t preaching to the youngsters.

Whether it works is a whole other thing. But the thinking, according to Bach, is:

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“We want to take sport to the youth. With the many options that young people have, we cannot expect any more that they will come automatically to us. We have to go to them. Tokyo 2020’s balanced proposal fulfils all of the goals of the Olympic Agenda 2020 recommendation that allowed it.

“Taken together, the five sports are an innovative combination of established and emerging, youth-focused events that are popular in Japan and will add to the legacy of the Tokyo Games.”

So when I saw Tokyo’s Prime Bloody Minister come out of a freaking warp pipe dressed as Mario, I knew change was in the air. This man was making a statement about the future of the world, and the future of the Olympic Games.

Video games and technology are remarkably integrated with Japanese society, even if they’re not as wholly relied upon as they are in South Korea.

In Australia there are many who don’t play them, or those who think that Bejeweled Blitz is just a way of passing the time, not a statement about their identity so don’t count me among Australia’s however many million gamers thank you very much.

But the facts are it’s becoming increasingly normalised worldwide as the internet’s grip tightens. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe recognises this, thus the Mario getup.

Could you imagine Prime Minister Turnbull dressing up as anything other than Malcolm?

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Wouldn’t happen. And it says a lot about how Australians generally react to this next statement.

Video Games will be Olympic sports.

One day, in some form, eSports is going to be in the Olympics, assuming the movement lives long enough.

It might not be in 12 years, but give my prediction at least half a century. That’s how long it took skateboarding.

There are hurdles to jump, but the industry is evolving exceptionally rapidly and it quickly becoming more and more professional. Bad eggs are being found, boiled, and thrown at the wall as an example to other bad eggs to stay away.

It’s been verified as a second-level Olympic sport in Korea – that puts eSports on the level of chess and polo.

Tha’s a huge step in the Olympic direction for what started as nerds huddling in their parents’ basements on game nights. And what has, to date, been a meteoric if somewhat shambolic ride to stardom.

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eSports as a movement is on a growth trajectory that rivals anything mainstream. The uptake is huge, and as the federations and bodies becomes increasingly regulated the competition will become more legitimate.

The only thing that will stop eSports becoming an Olympic sport is the participants and fans themselves. They will be the ones who choose whether eSports, in whichever form it takes at the time, enters the realm of the traditional or maintains its seperation.

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