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posted by on Wednesday April 19 2017, @09:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the it-worked-for-judo-and-beach-volleyball dept.

Alibaba is venturing out of e-commerce and further into esports.

The company's sports subsidiary, Alisports, has joined with the Olympic Council of Asia to bring esports to the Asian Games.

Esports will appear at next year's Games in Indonesia as a "demonstration," Alibaba said, but will be an official medal sport in China's 2022 Games. The Asian Games are recognised by the International Olympic Committee, meaning in 2022 esports will be an official Olympic sport.

Esports is a growing market that is expected to garner 191 million global enthusiasts by the year's end, according to research firm Newzoo. As of last April, the industry was worth over $450 million -- a number expected to grow to $1 billion by 2019.

That growth is manifesting in many ways. Not only is esports now technically an Olympic sport, the NBA will soon be creating its own esports league, and there are gaming schools to groom the next generation of pros.

Can't decide--is this exciting, or sad?


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  • (Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Wednesday April 19 2017, @01:23PM (3 children)

    by Rivenaleem (3400) on Wednesday April 19 2017, @01:23PM (#496278)

    I don't want to get into the argument of whether it is a sport or not, that's just a word and words evolve new meaning over time. What bothers me is why they want to be an Olympic sport. They have enough interest that they don't need the marketing power of the IOC and all the corruption that comes with that. They should set themselves up as their own, better, authority for competitive gaming. It would be great if someone came along and overthrew the IOC.

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  • (Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday April 19 2017, @02:17PM (2 children)

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 19 2017, @02:17PM (#496308)

    The IOC are greedy and don't care what people think about them. If they can make money by airing esports then they certainly will. I think it will fail because there are already enough complaints about watching the olympics on tv. You can't watch the live events you want to and you can't get a full recording of it. You are at the mercy of the channel who paid the most money to the IOC.

    There have been gaming competitions for over a decade. Getting the competitions televised has been a huge struggle. Sometimes a game would air on ESPN but then a flood of complaints would come in about "video games on my sports channel". Mainstream has been very resistant to give any airtime to esports. That hasn't hurt esports though. The games would still happen if only a few hundred people were watching. They are in it for the fun. The way sports used to be.

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    • (Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Wednesday April 19 2017, @02:53PM (1 child)

      by Rivenaleem (3400) on Wednesday April 19 2017, @02:53PM (#496325)

      They don't need TV, when there's more than enough online streaming sites to cover them. Twitch or Youtube or in Blizzard's case, they can stream it themselves and charge admission.

      • (Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday April 19 2017, @02:56PM

        by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 19 2017, @02:56PM (#496329)

        Pretty much the current state of things because of mainstream rejection.

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