sumail is probably one of the most
interesting 18 year-olds you’ve never
heard of last year sumail was named by
Time magazine as one of the top 30 most
influential teams the reason sumail was
on that list was because he is one of
the best builder two players in the
world if you’re not familiar with dota 2
it is one of several online video games
where professional teams compete for
fame and fortune
sumail started playing dota 2 when he
was 7 when he was living in Pakistan he
didn’t have his own computer so what he
would do is pile up on a motorbike with
his cousins and his friends to go to the
local internet cafe to play despite
these circumstances
sumo got so good at the game that he was
recruited by a top American eSports team
when he was 15 by the time he was 16 he
became the youngest player to earn more
than 1 million dollars in prize earnings
and a big part of that earnings was for
winning the dota 2 World Championship in
2015 his team won 6.6 million dollars
for winning first place and the future
Olympians of tomorrow will include
eSports players like stumail not because
eSports is a sport of the future but
because eSports is a sport of today
today professional teams are competing
for millions of dollars in front of
millions of fans today professional
eSports tournaments are being played at
marquee stadiums like Madison Square
Garden in New York City Staples Center
in Los Angeles and the bird’s nest in
Beijing today there are more than 30
sports organizations globally involved
with these sports including teams such
as the Philadelphia 76ers
there’s a basketball team in America and
Manchester City a football team in the
English Premier League these sports
organizations and their billionaire team
owners are getting involved with eSports
because they know that there are more
people watching and playing eSports than
ever before meanwhile traditional sports
have been declining on both fronts
somewhere Olympic ratings down 15% the
National Football League regular season
ratings down 9% English Premier League
down 19% not only are people watching
sports less people are playing sports
less in the United States over the past
few years there are millions of fewer
children actively playing team sports
and one reason why people are watching
and playing sports less is because it is
very is becoming very expensive ESPN
which is the top American sports cable
channel is on track to pay 7.3 billion
dollars for rights this year that’s more
than any other company in America
meanwhile they’ve lost 9 million
subscribers since 2013 for sports
participation 38% of families earning
less than 25 thousand participate in
team sports while children from families
earning $100,000 or more 67% of those
families participate another study shows
that up to 10.5% of a family’s gross
income to be spent on sports so for a
typical family earning the medium income
in America they could be spending up to
five point eight thousand dollars
besides financial considerations some
people and institutions believe that
eSports is actually taken away from
sports viewership and participation and
they are right in this study conducted
by News ooh 76 percent of eSports
entities say that the time they spend
watching eSports is taking away from the
time they would spend watching sports
and that makes a lot of sense because
younger generations are growing growing
up in front of computers and other
devices rather than a television and
when we look at digital hours watched
eSports far eclipses traditional sports
when we compare the Super Bowl which is
one of the largest sporting events in
the world with the League of Legends
World Championship which is the biggest
eSports event in the world the numbers
are amazing you know 43 million people
unique viewers watched the League of
Legends Finals compared to less than 5
million for the Super Bowl and it’s not
just about watching main tournaments on
one platform twitch there are over a
hundred million people who tuned in
every month to watch their favorite
players and influencers practice and
play so this image is of a player a
Korean player named faker who is often
often called the Michael Jordan of
eSports his opponents and his fans alike
call him God and last month two hundred
forty five thousand people tuned in to
watch God practice so for context that’s
like saying for your favorite athlete
whether it’s a football player or a
basketball player you will rather watch
him or her practice that compete against
an actual team and that’s part of reason
why the eSports audience continues to
grow because you’re not just watching
matches you’re watching people practice
and just having fun you to estimate said
there are 385 million people who will
watch eSports this year that number will
grow to 589 million by 2020 another
interesting thing about eSports audience
is that not only do they watch they also
play so for league of legends which we
mentioned earlier there are more people
who play League of Legends than amount
of people who live in Germany France or
the United Kingdom it’s clear that
eSports is here and eSports is big
Thomas Bach who is a president of the
International Olympic Committee says he
wants to bring sport to the youth
because they have lot of other options
and he cannot
like that they will come to sports or
come to Olympics mr. buck is right and I
believe the sport that we should take to
youth is eSports but before we get there
there are three hurdles we must overcome
the first hurdle is shelf life when you
think about traditional sports it lasts
forever
you could play soccer forever but
eSports at his core our video games that
are created and maintained by private
game developers however that trend has
begun to change as well historically
game developers would develop a game put
in a box and sell in a store and as a
customer I would go in and pay upfront
enjoy that experience and then come back
next year for the second version however
now games are being developed as a
service so game developers wish to
update them constantly to keep gamers
hooked for a longer period of time and
for Steam which is the largest
distribution platform for online video
games we saw that in 2016 50% of their
top games were created before 2016 one
of these games is counter-strike and the
last image you saw was what it looked
like back in 1999 this is what it looks
like today so there has been a lot of
incremental improvements over the past
18 years
meanwhile counter-strike is one is as
popular as it has ever been
last month there were more than 1
million people who tuned in to watch a
current rec tournament the second hurdle
is organization organization is very
important to the International Olympic
Committee that is why sports such as
snowboarding had to align themselves
with the International Ski Federation
and that’s why sports such as BMX had to
align themselves with the International
Cycling Union well we’ve got a problem
in these sports because there are no
comparable organizations we can belong
to so we have to surf from scratch on
the national front we could look at
South Korea as a model in 2000 self
Korea formed the organization called the
Korean eSports Association
also known as KeSPA KeSPA has really
grown and involved with the Korean
eSports ecosystem so they do a variety
of things first
they preserve competitive integrity they
actively litigate against match fixers
and cheaters and they have the ability
to ban players for life
second they work with game developers to
promote quality of life for Korean
eSports players so in Korea eSports
professional eSports players are
guaranteed minimum salaries and they
have a minimum one year contract
the third thing that Casbah does is they
regulate internet cafes to combat
internet addiction as well as to promote
the amateur Korean eSports scene on the
international front the international
eSports Federation IeSF was formed in
2008 with the goal to make eSports
officially a sport with the Olympics and
they’ve done a lot of work like Tesla
over the past few years there are 46
member countries 22 members between two
member countries recognized eSports as a
sport today and the other 24 are in the
process of doing so last year IeSF
petitioned the International Olympic
Committee to recognize it as the
official organising body for eSports the
third and most interesting hurdle is the
perception that eSports requires little
to no physical activity like many of you
as a sports spectator I grew up thinking
that all athletes need to look something
like this so I was really focused on
just a body but eSports like sports
involves body will and mind and but will
just cover the body first because many
people expect you know athletes to have
muscle and this is one of my former
players Grayson Gilmer Grayson Gilmer
was a former football player in high
school from Texas before he joined our
team as an esports player and as you can
see his biceps are bigger than my head
so you know if muscle or physical
fitness is a criteria for you then we
have that in eSports but I’ll be the
first to admit that not every single
player in eSports
looks like Greyson today but the trend
is going towards more physical fitness
because eSports athletes only care about
one thing they care about winning and
physical fitness helps them accomplish
that finally you know eSports athletes
and just gamers in general are no longer
the Nerds that are hiding around in
their parents basements they look like
this today and I think this is a good
image that conveys what they look like
since we’re talking about the Olympics
it’s also important to feel or to
understand what Olympic athletes think
about eSports athletes Michael Phelps
who has won 23 gold medals calls eSports
athletes quote his fellow athletes and
he believes that the skill training and
devotion required to become an eSports
athlete makes them athletes as well I
agree with Michael Phelps and I saw
firsthand how much work it took to
become an eSports athlete when I had my
own eSports team member I formed ember
with my co-founder back in 2015 with
with the idea that we want to put as
much infrastructure and support behind
the players much like what you would see
in traditional sports organizations so
here’s what we did on the body will and
mind side for body we hired one Swayze
who is a personal trainer in Los Angeles
and Ryan for fun likes to run through
fire and here’s a short clip of what he
helped our team did what they’re doing
is creating a sound body mind and spirit
Billy oh God breaking up the stigma of
classic gamer just eat Cheetos and
drinking Mountain Dew all day so are our
players at first they they doubted the
physical training but when once they
started winning games they incorporated
physical training into their own
routines because they just they just
care about winning for mindin uh for
mine and we’ll we had a combination of
help from Jonathan Carter and Walden
Greene Jonathan Carter on the left he is
a certified instructor
in the United States Army’s master
resilience trainers course resilience is
very important in eSports because the
matches are mentally exhausting Mark
Cuban who is the owner of the Dallas
Mavericks
calls eSports five dimensional chess so
just has how he trained soldiers and
soldiers families to cope with the blow
deployments and to develop resilience he
helped their players are the same
Walden Greene helped us create a high
performance environment because eSports
is not about just clicking your mouse or
your keyboard faster to win eSports is
requires a lot of strategy and more
importantly real-time strategies to to
win so well then focused on that for us
through goal setting as well as player
communication our team trained 9:00 a.m.
often until midnight five or six days a
week and all of this training is why the
United States started offering athletic
visas for certain eSports athletes all
of this training is why Michael Phelps
calls eSports athletes his fellow
athletes and all of this training is why
eSports should be at the Olympics so
what’s next how do we get there the
first step is the International Olympic
Committee should recognize IeSF as
official organising body for eSports
second it would be tremendously helpful
if Floss Angeles was selected as the
host city for the 2024 Olympics and I’m
not just saying that because I’m from
there why Los Angeles has a unique
abundance of infrastructure and talent
for eSports competitions because some of
the top game developers and top eSports
teams are located in Los Angeles also LA
eSports is incredibly popular in
Southern California and having locally
popular youth oriented sports increases
the chances of them being added to the
Olympics which is why we saw Karate
baseball and skateboarding added to
Tokyo Olympics so if you agree with me
is how you can help go to change the org
search for eSports Olympics and saw my
petition with your help we can bring
eSports to the Olympics and to really
leverage this global phenomenon in a
positive way to improve body will and
mind for millions of young people around the world thank you