Swiss Soccer Fans Stage Esports Protest
This will be the first time we have recapped a traditional sports game in our esports column. During the Swiss Super Football League, fans of the BSC Young Boys team staged a significant esports protest during their match against FC Basel.
Fans started the esports protest by blasting the field with targeted debris; they threw tennis balls and video game controllers with “F*** ESPORTS” written on them. The referees were forced to stop the game. While they did, fans from the BSC Young Boys side of the stadium held up a giant banner with a “pause” symbol while Basel protestors supported them with their own esports protest banners.
Among them was a banner that read “scheiss esports,” which…well, you can probably guess what it means based on context, right?
In the past few years, esports and traditional sports have tried tying their communities together as much as possible to unify fanbases. FIFA, 2K, Madden, EA UFC and others have held tie-ins, special tournaments, and other events to coordinate video games and “the real thing” under a larger umbrella.
It indeed isn’t unusual by any stretch of the imagination—sports video games have been using real player likenesses for decades now, and in-game player stats seem to evolve in real time with the yearly releases. Football leagues in Europe are no exception.
This esports protest is part of a more significant problem within the European Football community regarding commercialization. Ticket prices have been on the rise, and fans are considered that networks and leagues are losing the heart of the sport.
For the most dedicated fans of the sport, esports integration is nothing more than another cash grab. If one doesn’t understand how important this can be for the esports community, or why marketers try so hard to appeal to both sides of the same coin, then yeah, it’s just going to seem like a quick buck for the bigwigs.
Another problem for football as an industry is that entertainment as an industry is widening and traditional sports are constantly in competition with new media. Many consumers are under the assumption that gigantic sports leagues will always be in business and operating, but they can hurt for cash the same as any other industry.
To make a long bullet point a lot shorter, sports executives and sports fans want to be careful with whom they share profits with. Incorporating an entirely separate entertainment industry that has been on a meteoric rise isn’t a smart move.
We think it’s good, obviously—we’re in the business of esports. A significant portion of people on the other side of the fence has made it clear that they don’t want to be in the business of esports.
It can also be a severe image problem for sports fans. Esports competitors and esports viewers could potentially, and very quickly, crowd out the old guard of fans. For investors, the old guard likely spends the most money on television subscriptions, ticket prices, concessions, the whole works.
The anti-esports sentiment within the “real” sports fans communities is echoed at all parts of the pyramid. Ever since video games have started showing up more and more on ESPN, especially with The Overwatch League and Heroes of the Dorm, fans have blasted comment sections with hateful rhetoric.
One of the original arguments against esports is that the players are not “real athletes,” but the larger discussion has mostly bypassed this point. Networks have treated players with the same celebrity that they would treat high-skill practitioners of any activity. Besides, Chess has been seen as a major sport in several Western countries for decades.
The Road to Olympia
PwC Audit Service, originating from London, published their findings from a global survey of executives in the traditional sports industry. The survey asked questions about esports’ place in the Olympics and how it qualified overall. Answers were mixed, with some executives disagreeing that they qualify as sports and some stating that esports must unify as a community first.
After the most recent Asian Games discussion, it seemed like esports didn’t have that far to go before it was recognized as an Olympic institution, but with these obtuse protests, it might have a bit farther to go.
Besides, the Olympic committees usually have their interests in mind above all else. It’s hard to imagine that esports as an industry would be getting special treatment over, say, boxing leagues and fencing clubs.
Events like these certainly cause interest to dwindle. There are so many complications that it makes it difficult for esports to go through the bureaucracy of traditional sports. Even if both industries support each other in the future, it might be a long time before they genuinely merge and work together.
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