Any game that qualifies as an esports game, featuring skill comparison through competition or aiming for high performance to top a leaderboard or otherwise measure performance, shares a significant and extremely important overlap with traditional sports at the fundamental level. That is, all traditional sports and all esports comprise a set of skills that are trainable.
Skill Training: Esports vs. Traditional Sports
If we draw a very simplified comparison to demonstrate this, we can say that being good at football is based on demonstrating a high level of skill across areas like ball control, passing, shooting, and tackling, all of which can be trained. Similarly, being good at games like Valorant or Counter-Strike involves demonstrating a high level of skill across areas like aiming, recoil control, movement, and utility use, which again can all be trained.
Challenging the Narrative
These fundamental similarities conflict with a major mainstream narrative in esports, namely, the narrative that esports are not sports and that esports can’t be operated in the same way as traditional sports.
Origins of the Narrative
To understand this in more detail, we first need to realize where this narrative comes from, which is from top-level esports organizations and game developers operating esports scenes. For these individuals, in the current esports ecosystem, this narrative is true. The conditions around operating a Tier 1 (T1) esports team or a league are fundamentally different between esports and traditional sports. Recent attempts at replicating franchised leagues like the NFL have not succeeded, making it clear that for these organizations and companies, esports can’t be approached in the same way as traditional sports.
Esports at the Grassroots Level
However, the further down the ladder we go, into the Tier 3 (T3) esports scene and all the way down to young and passionate gamers who don’t even understand the concept of esports, the environment starts looking more and more similar to that of traditional sports. At the very bottom, in the roots of grassroots, things are virtually indistinguishable.
Passionate Gamers and Traditional Athletes
In this part of the ecosystem, there are no sponsors, no merch sales, no media rights to complicate things. There is just a pool of passionate gamers who want to get better in a social and constructive way. This mirrors traditional sports. For football/soccer, we have a pool of kids who enjoy running and kicking a ball around in a group of their peers, and they would like to have fun while doing so. In esports, we have a pool of kids who enjoy exploring digital worlds and playing games, and they would like to have fun while doing so.
Advancing Skills
Above this level, we have slightly more advanced kids who know what football is, enjoy the game, and want to get better at it. We have the exact same thing in esports, a pool of slightly more advanced kids who know more about gaming and the criteria for succeeding in their game of choice and want to improve. These similar conditions across gaming and traditional sports continue most of the way up to the semi-professional level.
The Rise of Gaming Acceptance
These similarities are further amplified as gaming reaches more mainstream acceptance among youth. Gaming skill is no longer seen as an indicator of being a huge nerd but is instead valued by peer groups similarly to high performance in sports. This increases the desire to build skill and the importance of the availability of structured programs even further.
Building Supportive Programs
The primary difference between traditional sports and esports at this level is not the conditions for building programs but in what has been built. In traditional sports, a young, interested athlete can enroll in training programs that range from community-based to elite and receive appropriate assistance throughout their journey, even all the way into professional play. In contrast, young, passionate, and interested gamers are left to fend for themselves, and the burden of support is placed on their parents, many of whom don’t know how to support their kids and would welcome the support and help organized youth sports offer.
Opportunities for Growth
Treating esports in the same way as traditional sports at this level presents significant opportunities for the overall industry, both in terms of increasing engagement and participation and from a monetization perspective. According to The Aspen Institute, U.S. parents spend an average of $883 a year on sports training per child. With the right kind of program, the same value of participation found in traditional sports could be provided to those in esports programs.
The Potential Market
With an estimated 90% of the 73 million kids in the US playing video games to some extent, even a 5% engagement rate of the estimated 65.7 million gamers in the US at $500 annually would represent an annual revenue stream of $1.6 billion through programs aimed at helping kids be happier, healthier, and more skilled at their preferred passion - gaming.
Join the Mission
This is what we at the ECA want to build. If you are interested in participating in that mission, please reach out.
Any game that qualifies as an esports game, featuring skill comparison through competition or aiming for high performance to top a leaderboard or otherwise measure performance, shares a significant and extremely important overlap with traditional sports at the fundamental level. That is, all traditional sports and all esports comprise a set of skills that are trainable.
Skill Training: Esports vs. Traditional Sports
If we draw a very simplified comparison to demonstrate this, we can say that being good at football is based on demonstrating a high level of skill across areas like ball control, passing, shooting, and tackling, all of which can be trained. Similarly, being good at games like Valorant or Counter-Strike involves demonstrating a high level of skill across areas like aiming, recoil control, movement, and utility use, which again can all be trained.
Challenging the Narrative
These fundamental similarities conflict with a major mainstream narrative in esports, namely, the narrative that esports are not sports and that esports can’t be operated in the same way as traditional sports.
Origins of the Narrative
To understand this in more detail, we first need to realize where this narrative comes from, which is from top-level esports organizations and game developers operating esports scenes. For these individuals, in the current esports ecosystem, this narrative is true. The conditions around operating a Tier 1 (T1) esports team or a league are fundamentally different between esports and traditional sports. Recent attempts at replicating franchised leagues like the NFL have not succeeded, making it clear that for these organizations and companies, esports can’t be approached in the same way as traditional sports.
Esports at the Grassroots Level
However, the further down the ladder we go, into the Tier 3 (T3) esports scene and all the way down to young and passionate gamers who don’t even understand the concept of esports, the environment starts looking more and more similar to that of traditional sports. At the very bottom, in the roots of grassroots, things are virtually indistinguishable.
Passionate Gamers and Traditional Athletes
In this part of the ecosystem, there are no sponsors, no merch sales, no media rights to complicate things. There is just a pool of passionate gamers who want to get better in a social and constructive way. This mirrors traditional sports. For football/soccer, we have a pool of kids who enjoy running and kicking a ball around in a group of their peers, and they would like to have fun while doing so. In esports, we have a pool of kids who enjoy exploring digital worlds and playing games, and they would like to have fun while doing so.
Advancing Skills
Above this level, we have slightly more advanced kids who know what football is, enjoy the game, and want to get better at it. We have the exact same thing in esports, a pool of slightly more advanced kids who know more about gaming and the criteria for succeeding in their game of choice and want to improve. These similar conditions across gaming and traditional sports continue most of the way up to the semi-professional level.
The Rise of Gaming Acceptance
These similarities are further amplified as gaming reaches more mainstream acceptance among youth. Gaming skill is no longer seen as an indicator of being a huge nerd but is instead valued by peer groups similarly to high performance in sports. This increases the desire to build skill and the importance of the availability of structured programs even further.
Building Supportive Programs
The primary difference between traditional sports and esports at this level is not the conditions for building programs but in what has been built. In traditional sports, a young, interested athlete can enroll in training programs that range from community-based to elite and receive appropriate assistance throughout their journey, even all the way into professional play. In contrast, young, passionate, and interested gamers are left to fend for themselves, and the burden of support is placed on their parents, many of whom don’t know how to support their kids and would welcome the support and help organized youth sports offer.
Opportunities for Growth
Treating esports in the same way as traditional sports at this level presents significant opportunities for the overall industry, both in terms of increasing engagement and participation and from a monetization perspective. According to The Aspen Institute, U.S. parents spend an average of $883 a year on sports training per child. With the right kind of program, the same value of participation found in traditional sports could be provided to those in esports programs.
The Potential Market
With an estimated 90% of the 73 million kids in the US playing video games to some extent, even a 5% engagement rate of the estimated 65.7 million gamers in the US at $500 annually would represent an annual revenue stream of $1.6 billion through programs aimed at helping kids be happier, healthier, and more skilled at their preferred passion - gaming.
Join the Mission
This is what we at the ECA want to build. If you are interested in participating in that mission, please reach out.