ESPN President John Skipper doesn't consider eSports as a sport, he mentioned during the Code/Media Series: New York conference on Thursday, categorizing it as a competition along with strategy board games.
“It’s not a sport — it’s a competition. Chess is a competition. Checkers is a competition,” Skipper said, when prompted for his opinion about Amazon’s impending $1 billion buyout of live streaming service Twitch. “Mostly, I’m interested in doing real sports.”
After passing a decision last year, the United States government recognizes League of Legends players as professional athletes and the International Olympic Committee recently included Riot Games' MOBA as an official Olympic sport.
eSports is exploding across all facets and regions it touches. For example, the recent Evolution Championship Series event drew a record-breaking 1.7 million unique online viewers for the biggest fighting game tournament in the world. This year’s Dota 2 tournament, The International 4, reached a record-breaking prize pool of more than $10 million with more than 20 million viewers online in July. The figure excludes viewers on ESPN, MTG Europe, or CCTV China TV.
Take a look at how strategy games, MOBAs and fighters have become a legitimate sport in America. We discuss the major emergent changes happening in the eSports scene in a recent IGN Arena episode.
Thank you, Re/Code.
kotaku.com
eurogamer.net
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