Electronic Sports: Really a "Sport"?

Video games have been around for many years and so has competitive gaming. The first video game was created around 1970 and was Pong. Pong required one or two players to play. The players would play next to each other and the game required both players to move the courser to the ball and knock in to the other player’s side. Pong was the first competitive video game because you could play with another person. The video game industry now is a very big market and is suspected to be an 86 billion dollar industry in 2016 (A Classification Of Business Models In Video Game Industry). For the past couple of years video competitions have gotten really popular and now there is a franchise called eSports that hosts gaming competitions in big areas. “The past several year’s eSports have seen meteoric growth in dozens of markets, attracting tens of millions of viewers each year in the United States, alone” (Hollist). Esports is made up of many different games and each game has different teams that specialize in the game that they are competing in. E-Sports 89 million viewers in 2014 and is suspected to grow to 145 million in 2017. ("Red Bull Media Readies ESports Studio for Prime Time."). Competitive gaming should be recognized as a sport because each team has a sponsor. The sponsors pay for all associated costs of the player’s gaming including, but not limited to, plane tickets, hotel rooms, and food. In return the teams have to wear the

What exactly determines whether or not an activity is a sport? The term sport is defined by The Free Dictionary as: A physical activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively, an activity involving physical exertion and skill that is governed by a set of

They adhere to all the benefits a traditional athlete would as well as all the sacrifices. But at the end of the day, it does not matter people do not accept professional gamers as athletes. Esports is an amazing thing that can bring families and friends closer as they experience the joy of seeing their favorite team play live on stage for the first time. esports provides opportunities to passionate gamers who aspire to play at the professional or amateur level. esports, is the next generation of

A sport is an activity that has specific rules and has a winner. The main goal of a sport is to win. The characteristics of a sport is that there must be competition against yourself or someone else. There has to be a possibility that

So that begs the question, what is a sport? Is it using a ball or scoring goals or running and kicking? Is it competing against others with the aim of winning a trophy, ribbon, or money? If a so-called sport does not include those things, does that make it not a sport? Here is my criteria for a sport: if it is in the Olympics, it is a sport.

A sport is defined as an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment. There are many different national and international associations and organizations that hold their own standard to what can be considered a sport, but they are all similar: if it involves physical activity and competitions. Cheerleading does, in fact, fit underneath

a generic sport like basketball or football, and they do everything they can to prove that. For

First off, what does it actually mean to be classified as a sport? According to The Women’s Sports Foundation these are the elements that define a sport:

“Should video games be considered a sport?” Well believe it or not, there’s are kids out there who actually claim it as one. And there is many reasons to why it should be called a sport. Video games is the only thing some kids are good at because not everyone is physically capable of playing sports such as basketball or football. So if they want to say it’s a sport, then why not? It consists of lot’s of competition at games, right equipment, and lots of hard work and dedication.

The first reason why golf should be considered a sport is because many people call pro golfers athletes.An example of this would be,”The associated press has named a golfer as its female athlete of the year 24 times”( https://golf.procon.org/ ).If she plays golf and has been named female athlete of the year,then that makes her an athlete which makes golf a real sport.Another example from them is,”Golfer Tiger Woods is the richest athlete in history and was the first athlete to surpass 1 billion dollars in career earnings”( https://golf.procon.org/ ).See that’s a lot of money which is being earned by an athlete who is playing a sport.That’s only one reason why Golf should be called a

Video gaming is something anyone at any age level can do and requires very little physical activity and therefore should not be considered a sport. It also does not take a lot of effort to play a video game; all you need is two hands, sometimes one depending on what game console you’re using. (Lauren) A real sport consists of human activity involving physical skill and exertion. (What is A Sport?)

I strongly agree that Gaming should be a sport. I believe so because it requires skill, strategy,and team effort. Esports players known as “Gamers” train for hours including days, till they have their tournaments. ESports is rising higher and higher each year, for an example “Last year’s League of Legends tournament peaked at 11.2 million viewers, for example, whereas the NHL Finals only hit 8 million.” (DEBATE FROM THE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2015 ISSUE,Phan)

Although competitive video game players or people who create video games may believe that video games are right in being considered as a sport, I do not believe that video games should be considered as a sport because they are not athletic in any way and do not require any physical activity. Although, I believe this there are certain points that I can agree with.

Given these points, this all relates to video games being a sport. Professional gamers getting paid along with the amount of talent needed, both point to why video games should be considered a sport. While there are minimal

A sport is defined as an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature. Competitive. Competition is a rivalry between two or more persons or groups for an object desired in common, usually resulting in a victor and a loser. Something to argue would be if a competition could legitimately be considered a sport. The word ‘compete’ is in the definition of sport after all. So, should eSports, or Electronic Sports, be considered a sport?