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Olympics to Hold Its First Esports Games Starting in 2025, Amid Concerns
The games industry may be surging, having recently generated more money than movies and North American sports combined, but enthusiasm for esports has ebbed and flowed. Now,... moreOlympics to Hold Its First Esports Games Starting in 2025, Amid Concerns
The games industry may be surging, having recently generated more money than movies and North American sports combined, but enthusiasm for esports has ebbed and flowed. Now, though, competitive gaming will get a jolt of recognition: The International Olympic Committee has just formalized the Olympic Esports Games, with the first scheduled for 2025 in Saudi Arabia.
Complicating the picture for the IOC: the themes of violence that run through many video games, and a political environment in Saudi Arabia that’s hostile to LGBTQ+ individuals.
The IOC hasn’t decided on the exact location and dates or, most importantly, which video game titles the esports athletes will be competing in. In the past, professional esports competitions have mostly been title-specific tournaments, including huge international efforts like the League of Legends World Championship and the Dota International.
The last couple of decades have seen esports leagues rise and fall, from the US-specific Major League Gaming (acquired by Activision Blizzard and now owned by Microsoft) to publisher-sponsored organizations like Activision Blizzard’s Overwatch League.
Large-scale professional gaming competitions have been pushed mostly by game publishers and esports leagues, but the IOC has been exploring esports since 2017, culminating in the Olympic Esports Week in Singapore in 2023 and a subsequent request to study the creation of a formal Olympic Esports Games.
The IOC Esports Commission said in a release Tuesday that it has “devised a project which addresses the interest of the esports community while respecting the Olympic values. This is particularly true with regard to the game titles on the programme, the promotion of gender equality and engagement with the young audience, which is embracing esports.”
Esports reviving the Olympics
Appealing to younger fans has been a priority for the IOC, leading it to adopt new event categories in recent Olympics. In 2020, the traditional Games added surfing, skateboarding and sport climbing, while breaking (what had been known as breakdancing) is debuting at the 2024 Paris Olympics. The IOC has been looking into esports as traditional sports audiences age — a MarketWatch report in 2017 noted that the average NBA viewers were in their early 40s, while average NFL and MLB viewers were in their 50s.
But even as the IOC Esports Commission formed to explore how it might integrate competitive gaming into the Olympics, questions arose about whether that marriage would work. Many of the top esports titles are violent first-person shooters, which goes against Olympic values of peaceful competition — the IOC flatly stated a year ago that games from the Counter-Strike and Call of Duty series would never be included in Olympic Esports, according to The Jakarta Post. While the IOC formalizing the Olympic Esports Games seems to put the debate to bed about whether virtual competition is a sport, siloing esports into their own event, away from the traditional Olympics, does send a complicated message.
The most pertinent question is whether gamers will flock to esports if they’re hosted by the Olympics, or if they’ll just continue watching tournaments and leagues that have been built up by the games industry and esports enthusiasts.
“Years ago I said, ‘The Olympics needs esports more than esports needs the Olympics,’ and I still stand by that statement,” said Rod Breslau, an esports and gaming consultant.
“However, there is no denying that esports officially being at the Olympics, and even the creation of its own games, is another major stepping stone in establishing competitive gaming as a ‘real thing’ to the mainstream,” Breslau added. “Video games at the Olympics is validation for an entire generation of kids that grew up playing Street Fighter, Quake or StarCraft.”
Esports Olympics in Saudi Arabia
Tuesday’s announcement focused on Saudi Arabia’s role in hosting the first esports Olympics, which spokespeople for the country said is a natural extension of Saudi Arabia’s support for traditional sports and efforts to reach young athletes.
“Our commitment to esports is simply a reflection of the world our young people live in,” Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Faisal, minister of sport and president of the Saudi Arabian Olympic and Paralympic Committee, said in the press release. “We now all have the chance to write new Olympic history together, the chance to inspire new dreams and new ambitions for literally millions of athletes around the world.”
Saudi Arabia has 23.5 million gamers and almost half are female, said Princess Reema Bandar Al-Saud, who’s on the board of directors of the Saudi Arabian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and is president of the Women’s Committee.
Saudi Arabia has been ramping up its investments in esports over the past several years, culminating in the 2024 Esports World Cup that kicked off July 3 and runs through Aug. 25. But that event has proved divisive as players, streamers and fans have protested and boycotted the championship, according to the BBC, because of hostility toward LGBTQ+ people on the part of the country, where same-sex acts are punishable by death.
Similarly, earlier this year advocacy groups protested the United Nations for appointing Saudi Arabia to lead the UN commission on women’s rights, citing the kingdom’s “abysmal” record in that realm, The Guardian reported. Though Saudi Arabian authorities have attempted reforms in recent years, like the 2022 Personal Status Law, Amnesty International criticized the legislation for entrenching “gender-based discrimination in every aspect of family life.”
The IOC defended its decision to partner with and hold the first Olympic Esports Games in Saudi Arabia, saying that the country’s National Olympic Committee is in line with the Olympic Charter and that the IOC will work with the committee to “ensure that the event will be held in a sustainable way and international standards are respected in the context of the event,” according to a statement attributed to an IOC spokesperson.
The IOC Esports Committee pointed to Saudi Arabia’s recent efforts to encourage sports participation among its population, including substantial growth among women, from girls playing in school football leagues to nearly 30 women’s national teams.
“With regards to LGBTQ+ players — within the context of the Olympic Esports Games and in line with the Olympic Charter, there will be no discrimination against any player on the basis of their gender or sexuality,” the IOC spokesperson said. “We will work with our Olympic Esports Games partners to ensure that all athletes/players feel welcome and compete safely in our events.”
There are other concerns about Saudi Arabia’s massive investments in esports — through acquisitions, the kingdom owns around 40% of the total esports market, according to a recent report by The New York Times, making it difficult for anyone in the industry not to work with or for the country. This has led to questions about whether the Olympic Esports Games would exist without Saudi Arabia’s investments.
“If the IOC truly believed in its principals they would have created the esports games without the Saudi partnership, and this news would be much more widely accepted,” said esports analyst Breslau. “As it stands, the Olympics is now complicit in esportswashing.”
Global politics and the Olympics
Some parts of the esports and gaming communities may again protest and even skip the inaugural Olympics Esports Games held in Saudi Arabia, but boycotting Olympics on moral and political grounds is a tradition that goes back to their modern resumption in the early 20th century, as this timeline from the Associated Press illustrates. Countries defeated in the world wars were excluded from the 1920 and 1948 Olympics, and Cold War tensions led to varying abstentions until the US led 60 countries in boycotting the 1980 Moscow Games over the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, followed by a Soviet boycott of the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.
Athletes from countries involved in wars condemned by the international community have been allowed to compete in the Games as neutral athletes under no flag, which is how competitors from Russia and Belarus — nations that have invaded and waged war on Ukraine for more than two years — are participating in the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The most prominent and long-lasting absence was that of South Africa, which was banned from attending the 1964 Tokyo Olympics due to its apartheid system of racial discrimination, as the AP described, and the country didn’t return to the Games until 1992, when referendums preceded the end of that government-imposed societal system.
At this early stage, it’s unclear how substantial any protests would be against the Olympic Esports Games in Saudi Arabia. Amid the 2024 Esports World Cup held in the country, some competitors attended while waging their own, quieter protests. The esports organization Team Liquid sent its members to compete, and they wore their official rainbow-colored Pride jerseys to show their support for the LGBTQ+ community on stage. Team Liquid co-CEO Steve Arhancet posted a lengthy explanation on X (formerly Twitter) ahead of the tournament of the organization’s decision and his own as a gay man to attend and, hopefully, spark conversations to inspire incremental change.
#lesottolenghi #Olympics #OlympicGames #Olympics2024 #parisolympics2024 #olympicsparis2024 #2024summerolympics #parisolympicsschedule
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‘I’m good to go’: Steph Catley fit for Matildas’ Olympics opener against Germany | Paris Olympic Games 2024
Coach Tony Gustavsson expects to have captain Steph Catley and a full-strength squad available when the Matildas face Germany in the... more‘I’m good to go’: Steph Catley fit for Matildas’ Olympics opener against Germany | Paris Olympic Games 2024
Coach Tony Gustavsson expects to have captain Steph Catley and a full-strength squad available when the Matildas face Germany in the opening match of their Olympic campaign on Thursday.
The Matildas have been beset by injury woes in the lead-up to the Paris Games, with Catley nursing a calf niggle, Katrina Gorry returning from an ankle injury, and other worries for attacking threat Caitlin Foord and defender Kaitlyn Torpey. But Gustavsson insisted his team was fit and ready to go following an extended pre-Olympics training camp, as all 22 players – 18 squad members and four reserves – trained on Wednesday in Marseille.
“Everyone trained today, which is good,” Gustavsson said. “It’s been a challenging preparation period, to be honest. If you look at the game minutes that these players have had over the last six months, with everything from stress fractures to foot surgeries to soft tissue injuries and all that. And then a break, and then coming in [to camp]. So we’ve had to do a lot of hard work and individual planning.
“It’s been a little bit of a challenge to get everyone up to speed, but to then see 100% of the players available for training today was amazing,” Gustavsson added.
While the coach said that final decisions on availability would be made following a last medical meeting, he indicated that Arsenal star Catley was expected to start against Germany. “If Steph is available, our captain, that’s a no-brainer,” he said.
“I’m fit,” added Catley, set to compete in her third Olympics. “I’m good to go.”
The Matildas enter the Games with high expectations after finishing fourth at both the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and home World Cup in 2023. But on each occasion the Australians fell in the third-place encounter; the team has never won a medal at a major international tournament.
“It would be incredible,” Catley said about the prospect of finishing on the podium in Paris. “This team has gone through a lot, been together for many, many years, we’ve come close to having some pretty amazing results. It’s definitely something that we want to achieve.
“But so does every single team in this tournament,” continued the 30-year-old. “Every single team in this tournament is incredible – the Olympics is really, really tough. Not to be clichéd but it really is one game at a time for us. We dream big always – every tournament we go into, we go into to win, to achieve the absolute most we can. But it’s risky to start to think like that, we just need to focus on Germany and how we can beat them.”
After the encounter with Germany, the Matildas will face Zambia in Nice on Sunday, before concluding the group with a blockbuster clash against long-time rivals the United States in Marseille next week. The Australians need to finish in the top two of group B, or be among the best-ranked third placed teams, to qualify for the quarter-finals.
On the eve of their opening match, and with the Paris 2024 opening ceremony only 48 hours away, Catley spoke of her pride at wearing the green and gold on the Olympic stage.
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“We know what the Olympics mean to everyone,” said the defender. “We take a lot of pride from the stories we share – meeting Cathy Freeman )ahead of the last World Cup], the connections we have with her, and how many of us grew up watching the Olympics and being so proud to be Australian in those massive moments.
“We want to recreate those kinds of moments for young girls watching the TV, up in the middle of the night watching us,” Catley added. “We want to make them proud – we want to give them that Olympic memory we had growing up.”
Goalkeeper Mackenzie Arnold, meanwhile, had a simple message for Australian fans ahead of the Germany clash: “Set your alarms.”
The Matildas’ Olympic opener will take place on Thursday evening local time (3am AEST). “It’s going to be an early one – set your alarms, get around it,” said Arnold. “It means a lot to us.”
#lesottolenghi #Olympics #OlympicGames #Olympics2024 #parisolympics2024 #olympicsparis2024 #2024summerolympics #parisolympicsschedule
https://lottolenghi.me/im-good-to-go-steph-catley-fit-for-matildas-olympics-opener-against-germany-paris-olympic-games-2024/ less
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