The Next Olympic Sport?

Playing videogames has become more than just a favorite pastime among prolonged-adolescent males. It is now a spectator sport, complete with marquee events, leagues, and sports stars. The World Cyber Games, the videogame World Cup, is preparing for its 6th annual tournament of players from across the globe. A professional league called Major League Gaming now has about 150 players and sponsorship support. And a powerful star culture of videogamers has emerged in places like South Korea, where players are treated like global soccer stars, and in America, where Jonathan Welden, aka Fata1ity, has started his own lifestyle brand with gaming products and potential plans for a clothing line.

The emerging professional videogame industry demonstrates the ways that technology is reconfiguring the sports industry. Not only are videogames a version of participant sports but they are also generating a fan base. In light of the performance-enhancing drug scandals all over the sports world, the most celebrated sports stars in the future may not be the athletes on the field but the people that control the athletes in videogames.

This entry was posted by Ben Shields on Sunday, July 30. 2006 at 10:14. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own blog.

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

    No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

  1. Chip F says:
    #1 2006-08-22 20:30 (Reply)

    Hey Ben, it's really interesting to see how serious the whole video game industry is getting, according to your examples. I did not realize that it was getting huge in the competitive sense like that. Sure, I sit around and play Madden, Halo, and things like that all the time, but man. As an Olympic sport? It seems crazy, but do you really think there is a chance for it to happen? Or are you just using that as an example?

    By the way, I read this book. It was excellent, and I'm going to ask one of my marketing professors (I go to UCLA) why we're not reading it in class.

    Good work,

    Chip


Add Comment


Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA