Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), has acknowledged that the games risk losing relevance. “We have to keep connected” with society, he said in 2020. To do so, the Olympics are expanding, adding what Mr Bach described as “youth-based” sports. In Tokyo, climbing, skateboarding and surfing were put on the schedule. In Paris next year, breakdancing will feature for the first time. Undoubtedly the youth will be thrilled. But if Mr Bach wants the Olympics to become more relevant to more people, the best idea would be to include e-sports, or competitive video games.

E-sports command a huge audience. By 2025, around 320m fans are expected to be watching at least once a month, reckons Newzoo, a data firm. In 2021 peak viewership for the World Championship final of League of Legends, a fantasy strategy game, was nearly 74m people, according to Riot Games, the game’s publishers. The peak figure for the Super Bowl, the highlight of the American football year, was 115m.

So far the IOC has approached e-sports like an uncool dad. An inaugural Olympic E-sports Week took place in Singapore in June. But the choice of events puzzled fans. The archery game, for instance, had been downloaded only 100 times before the tournament was announced. The most recognisable event, “Just Dance”, a motion-sensing dance simulator, is not considered an e-sport by aficionados. The experiment resulted in widespread mockery and multiple memes. Few people took the competition seriously. Peak viewership was barely more than 22,000.

The IOC should take its cue from the four-yearly Asian Games, which start in the Chinese city of Hangzhou on September 23rd. With 12,400 athletes, the competition will have more participants than the Tokyo Olympics. It will also be the first event of its size to feature e-sports. In addition to athletes participating in traditional sports, gamers from across Asia will compete in seven events, including hugely popular games such as FIFA Online 4, a football game, and League of Legends, which has more than 180m players. Organisers of the next Asian Games, in Japan, have confirmed they will also award medals for e-sports.

Capturing a big audience matters for events like the Olympics, which have seen the costs of infrastructure and security balloon in recent years. The inclusion of e-sports would boost revenues from media rights and sponsorship. The industry was valued at $1.4bn last year, a figure that is expected to triple by 2030, according to Cognitive Market Research, a consulting firm.

Yet the IOC remains hesitant about embracing the gaming world. It has claimed that mainstream video games do not align with Olympic values. One reason is the perceived association of e-sports with violence. Mr Bach has said that for the Olympics there is “an absolute taboo” regarding “killer games”, such as League of Legends. The Olympics may well encompass shooting, fencing and boxing, but according to Mr Bach these are a “civilised expression” of real fighting, unlike blasting a bunch of pixels on a screen. (There is, however, little evidence to suggest that violence in e-sports spills over into real life.)

Beyond the potential financial boost, the IOC has other reasons for changing its stance. For one, e-sports may bring Olympic glory to a more diverse group of countries. At the Asian Games, Vietnam and Indonesia, middleweights in mainstream sports, are among the favourites.

And as for Olympic values? At a tournament in February 2022, just after Russia invaded Ukraine, Oleksandr Kostyliev, a Ukrainian gamer, spoke warmly of his teammates, three Russians and one Ukrainian, whom he called “my real friends”. Team Spirit, another team containing Ukrainian and Russian gamers, responded to the invasion by releasing a statement saying, “We are against war and we are against violence.” Excellence, friendship and respect are the three Olympic values. E-sports stars manifest them pretty well.

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Updated: 24 Sep 2023, 11:52 AM IST