Really? I guess we’ll just have to disagree there. Frog legs might be big business in France*, but until there’s a corner restaurant selling them they’re irrelevant to me unless I’m in the international frog leg export business or frog rancher. For 99.95% of the population, “popularity” only matters when it’s in their neck of the woods so, objective or not, few people in Point A really give a shit what’s hot on the other side of the planet and boasting about those numbers just gets you bored shrugs.
*I have no idea how big a business frog legs actually are in France
I would not necessarily bet that this is the reason esports won’t become as big as football or baseball. After all, poker had a bizarre surge in popularity. Professional darts has a huge, huge following. Conversely, things like American Ninja Warrior and Beastmaster competitions are niche things, despite requiring ludicrous athleticism.
If I can make a different point, I think we might be seeing a general decline in the appeal of spectator sports and games, period. Attendance in pro sports has, almost everywhere, plateaued.
That’s certainly possible. If eSports overtakes traditional sports viewership, it will almost certainly be because people stop watching traditional sports and not because eSports ever enjoys the level of penetration (on a per capita basis) you saw for football, baseball, etc.
Huh. Around five million people watched the 2018 darts finals. [Carson]I did not know that.[/Carson] Less than the League of Legends finals though so people looking to hype the popularity of eSports can boast that it’s twice as popular as televised darts.
You are literally talking with a NASCAR fan, who chats about NASCAR with real life friends and online (mostly reddit). By your own posts, you are not a fan of the sport. So I don’t think I’ll take your opinion on what NASCAR fans appreciate about it.
To tie to back to esports. I think in a lot of ways people who don’t know much about the sport don’t really understand why people enjoy it or like it. That occurs for most every sport, however. For example, there are tons of Americans who have no clue why cricket is popular, but, of course, they don’t know much about the rules either.
Take this example: I know a bunch of people who are really into a music-genre called Dungeon Synth. They listen to it every day, they dj with it and they discuss new releases all the time. Among my friends, Dungeon Synth is wildly popular. But I can’t in good faith say that Dungeon Synth is a wildly popular genre within music. That would be ridiculous. None (or at least most) of my friends have never heard a song by Taylor Swift, but I can’t argue against her being popular.
By your definition of popularity, I could claim american football is unpopular. I can count on one hand the people I’ve met who’s seen a superbowl game. I’ve never seen one and most people around here couldn’t care less about it. I’ve probably met more people who’s into esports, something else I couldn’t care less about.
Who the fuck knows if esports can eclipse trad sports or not, but it seems reasonable to think it might some day.
Right. Because you’ve heard of her and know of her because she’s actually popular. In fact, I would wager money that every one of your friends who claims to have never heard a Taylor Swift song actually has because they go into grocery stores and dentist office and gas stations where she’s playing over the speakers – because she’s actually popular. On the other hand, when people say “What the fuck is a League of Legends?” they legitimately mean it because it actually has nearly zero penetration here outside of very selective niche audiences. League of Legends is the Dungeon Synth in this example; almost no one gives a shit about it but because it’s popular in your group, you’re convinced that it’s relevant.
You might not know many people personally who watch the Super Bowl but you’re aware that it happens, right? And people are talking about it? You hear about the commercials? I don’t follow football but I know through basic cultural osmosis who is playing in it each year. Can you not agree that it’s more culturally relevant in the United States when an event occurs that’s watched by tens of millions of people versus the relevance of one that attracts 10% of that on the other side of the planet?
I would say it would be much more interesting to ponder why you can get ten million Chinese dudes to watch LoL. What is the traditional sports scene there? From what little I’ve read, there’s traditional Chinese sports which get a little interest and then traditional western sports which get more play but don’t have anywhere near the same penetration on a per capita basis as they do in North America and Europe. So maybe there’s a void there that eSports is able to fill that doesn’t exist in other places and eSports will just never get the same opportunity here. Or maybe it will, but we sure don’t know based on a selective region audience somewhere else that has grown far beyond the growth shown elsewhere and claiming that it’s meaningful for US audiences.
There’s also, of course, the basic fact that you need a significantly lower amount of per capita interest when you’re dealing with one and a half billion people than you need to match the raw numbers of a three hundred million. So you could have a more popular events in China than one in the US but a dude in China still has fewer people around the water cooler to discuss it with. 10mil out of 1.350 billion is 0.7% of China watching LoL. 150mil out of 325mil US Super Bowl viewers is nearly half the country.
IIRC, one of the criteria for inclusion in the Games is that a sport must have an international governing body, a la IAATF, FIFA, or FINA. Could the exports community organize one in time?
Tangentially, if the IOOC let in esports, they’d have a hard time justifying the exclusion of chess or bridge or poker. Or .agic: The Gathering,come to that.
Maybe; I guess when I’ve watched esports and streams and that kind of thing, it’s been one of two things- it’s a game I don’t play, and therefore don’t quite get what makes it entertaining to watch (League of Legends is a perfect example) or a game I do play (say Overwatch), where the main difference is that the people are fractionally quicker than a mid-tier player, and don’t make dumb mistakes. But it’s hard to watch a pro-level Torbjorn and think “Man, that guy is the Wayne Gretzky of playing Torbjorn!” Instead it seems like the main distinguishing difference is that the pros are playing as teams by and large, not as a gang of randos tossed together for the match.
I suspect some of this may change as games are designed and developed with esports in mind- setting things up so that it’s easier to see a Michael Jordan level esports play would be one thing to do, and another would be to make the games themselves more self-evident so that there’s not a huge learning curve involved. They’ll have to have that same elevator pitch level of explanation like soccer, baseball, basketball, etc… to have any hope of having casual watchers or draw in new, non videogamer watchers.
Racing is a rare example of a sport where the individual participant is nearly invisible while the sport is happening - typically the body language and facial expressions of an athlete during competition are a big part of their individual appeal. Individual players develop unique personas that garner cult followings.
In racing, the drivers are given many opportunities to display their personalities in pre- and post- race interviews and events, so they are able to connect with people that way, even though they are hidden inside their cars during the actual competition.
For E-Sports to develop a large following, the gamers themselves need to have personas that fans can latch onto. Rivalries, clashes of personas, need to be promoted; there needs to be some personal connection to the gamers. Maybe such a thing already happens, I don’t know because I don’t know anything about E-Sports, but the fact that I don’t know anything about it is a sign that its competitors have not been publicized sufficiently.
The odds of you never having heard a song by Taylor Swift are ten thousand to one if you live in an English-speaking country, and not a lot better if you live anywhere else. You absolutely have, you just didn’t realize it. Unless you’re locked up in prison, you have heard a Taylor Swift song while out and about.
Conversely, the odds of my never having heard Dungeon Synth music is pretty high.
We can argue about what we like all day, but what is more popular in the sense of having a wide following is, in most cases, a matter of objective fact.
Nah, sorry. Most don’t actually know who the fuck Taylor Swift is and need me to explain what that supposedly is. Now, most don’t know what the fuck LoL is, but if I mention warcraft 3 or Diablo 2 they usually get it. My dad, just turned 60, got it in a couple of minutes. By the way, we don’t have music on speakers in grocery stores where I live, and if you don’t look for stuff it comes through commercials on radio. Weird right? There’s a world outside of the US. Dungeon synth is unpopular stuff, LoL ain’t. The “niche” audience is bigger than Taylor Swift’s.
I know what the superbowl is, but I don’t know jack shit about it other than it’s a game. Linebacker means something but I actually don’t have a clue what. If something is culturally relevant in the US, everyone will hear about it, sure, but most won’t actually get the relevance. I know more (and care more) about handball for women than the superbowl, and according to you that makes me able to claim american football is unpopular, because Chinese people. The world is bigger than Ohio.
Maybe EA could do it. They probably won’t be much more corrupt than FIFA.
Or China, for that matter.
Or the United States.
Or Earth.
Wait, no it’s not. Never mind.
It’s bigger than the moon though.
Did you know that 100% of the people on the moon watch eSports? Just imagine!
I’m gonna answer the question in the title without reading any arguments, just to give my raw opinion:
Yes, but not because they will wind up being more popular than sports are now. What we will see is a decrease in sports to some extent. A large part of the Super Bowl numbers is not the actual sport, but the prestige and cultural significance. I know I never watch football except the Super Bowl, where I make a party out of it, and I know I’m not alone.
I suspect we’ll have the same leveling out that happens in music, with sports no longer being as high for social events, even though people who like the athletics will still like it. Interest will spread among sports and esports, with it being roughly even, allowing esports to sometimes actually tower over sports.
Though, with American football in particular, I do think there may be a loss of interest due to long term injuries and the changes made to deal with that. That would be separate from the other phenomenon.
Now to read the thread and find out how wrong I probably am.
Reading through, I note you all mention having a legacy esport that can build up a fanbase. I also notice you mention a possible example: Mario Kart. Sure, there are new versions, but it’s still Mario Kart. That grants longevity. Smash Bros has the same situation going, as do the virtual sports.
I also wonder if games like Overwatch will either do the same thing, or just iterating and becoming better over time. There are a lot of esports games that just don’t seem to be losing popularity like they would have a few years ago.
As for “real people doing real things”: I guess that’s true, but there are also built in advantages to those who do it. They are, as they will admit, genetic freaks. It’s not like what you or I could do if we trained enough. And we’re not actually there watching them do it, where the spectacle of seeing it for real adds to the experience. It’s still just these others on TV doing this thing. It’s kinda like how magic is just not as impressive on TV, no matter how much you’re sure they didn’t use TV tricks.
eSports is the opposite, having more a feel of being able to practice enough to get that good (whether actually true or not), and that has its own appeal. And, even if you’re actually there, it’s still always on a screen.
The appeal of having played the game and so you want to watch it definitely leans towards esports more than regular sports, as fewer people seem to be into playing sports. The athletes of course still like them, but the people joining to have something fun to do have other stuff.
But, like I said, the main thing I see is sports becoming less popular, rather than eSports getting to actual sport levels as they are now. Another example would be TV ratings, and how they are nowhere near what they were before. Greater diversity means everything gets spread out, leveling the playing field. And I think sports, with their big towering games vs. small, less important games are more vulnerable to this effect.