One more step for the IOC on the well-trodden path of electronic sports. The Olympic body unveiled with fanfare, Wednesday March 1, the details of its second edition of the Olympic Esports Series. They are planned this year, with finals organized from June 22 to 25 in Singapore, as part of Olympic eSports Week.
For this second edition, the first in person, the IOC is pushing the boundaries. No less than nine virtual and simulation sports are already on the program. The list could be completed in the coming weeks. The poster presents itself as a fairly heterogeneous mix, where archery (Tic Tac Bow), baseball (eBASEBALL™: POWER PROS), tennis (Tennis Clash), cycling (Zwift) and taekwondo ( Virtual Taekwondo), all accustomed to the Olympic world, will share the setting and the program with chess (Chess.com), dance (JustDance), offshore sailing (Virtual Regatta), and motorsport (Gran Turismo) .
As a reminder, the first edition of the event, called Olympic Virtual Series, was held in 2021, before the Tokyo Games. Organized exclusively remotely, in virtual mode, it would have attracted, according to the IOC, more than 250.000 players from around a hundred countries. It had only five sports: baseball, cycling, motorsport, rowing and sailing. Four of them earned the right to return for a second try. The oar remained at the door.
The IOC explained this on Wednesday March 1 in a press release: the Olympic Esports Series 2023 “ open today ». First stage: a series of qualifying events, in the different games offered, intended to bring together professional and amateur players from around the world.
The best will be invited next June to the Suntec Center in Singapore, to compete in the finals. It announces itself as the “ climax " of the very first Olympic week of eSports. The IOC intends to deploy major resources, with a live broadcast of the events on Olympics.com and the Olympic social networks.
The body based in Lausanne trumpets it without modesty: “ With the Olympic Esports Series 2023, the Olympic Movement marks a new milestone in its support for the development of virtual sports, as provided for in Olympic Agenda 2020+5, and continues its collaboration with the gaming and esports communities in order to offer new opportunities to players and fans. »
Same story with Frenchman David Lappartient, president of the IOC liaison group on eSports and video games, and above all president of the International Cycling Union (UCI): “ The Olympic Esports Series 2023 was founded (…) with the ambition of creating more gaming spaces for both video game enthusiasts and fans of high-level sports competition. »
With this second foray into the world of eSports, will the IOC reach its target? Will he succeed in attracting into the Olympic fold a new generation often very indifferent to the magic of the rings? Not won in advance. Certainly, the body is plowing its furrow in territory that has long been foreign to it. She puts the means into it. She insists.
But his choice of disciplines still remains very conventional. Essentially, it is made up of electronic versions of traditional sports or disciplines. Insufficient, according to several players in the field, to attract the community of Gamers.
Vlad Marinescu, the president of the International Electronic Sports Federation (IESF), explained this to FrancsJeux in an interview published at the beginning of the year: “ It turns out that an electronic version of an existing sport generally does not attract a new audience. It also does not encourage young people to take up sport. Fans of online cycling, Zwift or connected, are the same ones who practice the discipline in its traditional form. »
