Ed Warner: Commonwealth Games has earned extra life by embracing esports
If you want to win a full bore rifle shooting medal at the Commonwealth Games you’ll need a keen eye, steady hand, ability to lower and control your heart rate, thousands of hours of practice – and a host city willing to include the event. However good you might be, then, Birmingham 2022 isn’t your time.
Early preparations for this summer’s Games were dogged by a spat over the non-inclusion of shooting. The surreal compromise of a venue switch to the Indian city of Chandigarh was eventually undone by Covid. And now the self-styled Friendly Games is welcoming esports to Birmingham this summer instead.
Keen eyes, steady hands, low and controlled heart rates and a (young) lifetime of practice will still be rewarded with medals – although those won in Dota 2 and the two other esports won’t count towards the official Games table.
A perennial pub debate is what constitutes a sport. One of my lines of attack is any game played in a pub itself is not a sport, so ruling out dominos but opening me up to being pinned to a board and used for target practice by outraged darts aficionados.
Bridge had a long running battle with Sport England and the tax authorities to be recognised as a sport. One prize was freedom from VAT for card players’ competition entry fees. It went to the European Court of Justice, with bridge the loser. As it happens, the International Olympic Committee takes a different view: both bridge and chess form part of its Asian Games.
The responses of sporting traditionalists to the Commonwealth Games Federation’s inclusion of esports have conformed to the “OK boomer!” stereotype. But let’s face it, there’s still lawn bowls on the Birmingham schedule, so something for all generations of the family to enjoy.
The CGF’s embracing of esports makes great sense to me. It needs to be seen in the context of its wider actions to revitalise the Games, a jamboree which struggles to find host cities and labours under a banner which harks back to Britain’s imperial history – a past which has diminishing geopolitical and cultural relevance in the 21st century.
Already the federation has declared that only athletics and swimming are sacrosanct in any future host city plans. What price shooting, then, whose basic objective rather runs counter to the “friendly” label? Sports on the current roster are understandably nervous. A cycling velodrome is an expensive commitment for a city, for example. As it happens, Birmingham’s track cycling will be taking place in London.
The Commonwealth Games arguably needs esports more than the gaming upstarts need the endorsement of the sporting establishment. This, after all, is a multi-billion-dollar industry whose feted star players earn millions. Playing for glory and not money will be an interesting test of the leading names’ ambitions, just as the Olympics has divided the top golfers and tennis stars.
The prize for esports is enhanced access to the world’s leading consumer brands, the names plastered over the Olympics. Already the Olympic movement is edging towards acceptance of esports. This year’s Asian Games in Hangzhou, China, will include eight esports official medal events, having had demonstration status last time round. The Commonwealth Games represents a significant step up in recognition, and a move closer to full Olympic status with its mainstream commercial riches.
As to the Commonwealth Games, this simply must be part of a complete overhaul of the CGF’s approach to hosting and selection of component sports – and an accompanying rebranding. More edginess and less of the “friendly”, I’d say.
T20 women’s cricket and 3×3 basketball are welcome debutants this summer. The IOC has been bolder, though, in its recent additions – not a phrase that has ever tripped off my keyboard before.
Esports fans are unlikely to be crossover followers of other Games sports, but they are a massive subset of the demographic that the CGF must capture if it is not to shrink into a dim corner of the public’s sporting consciousness.
Workmen and their tools
The day that esports enter the Olympics and UK Sport announces lottery funding for Britain’s leading gamers, expect a frenzy of complaints. The bubbling media angst about Team GB’s lack of medals at Beijing 2022 will be nothing by comparison.
I doubt the public is much bothered by the poor British showing in China. After all, aside from the ice rink sports, what right do we have as a non-alpine nation to expect any Winter Olympic success?
We have, though, become accustomed to skeleton medals, Britain winning at least one at every Games since the event was reintroduced to the roster at Salt Lake City 2002.
It’s not been a good look for GB’s athletes to complain about their sleds this week – not just because they’ve hardly been short of investment in their technology, but their gripes indirectly tarnish the success of their medal-winning predecessors. Was it all about the tech all along? I hope not.
Twelve green snappers, sat behind a wall
When at UK Athletics I’d froth with frustration at football’s domination of the media. Why would newspapers need to send three writers to a Premier League match when we were struggling to secure a column inch or two?
Stood in the away end at the new Brentford Community Stadium on Saturday, I counted a dozen green-bibbed press photographers to one side of the goal in front of me. For a mid-table contest that finished goalless.
Presumably they all fired off similar shots of the strikers’ blanks. Lucky that in the digital age they don’t each have to shoot costly rolls of 35mm film and bike them off to Fleet St or Wapping. Economies of scale anyone?
Dog ate homework
I’ll return to the doping furore surrounding skater Kamila Valieva next week once her time on the ice in Beijing is over.
For now, I’ll simply note that the “drank from Grandad’s glass” explanation for her failed drug test is of the “dog ate my homework” variety, emphasising just how craven the abuse of this vulnerable child is. Which is what greedy sports federations reap when they kowtow to Russia.
Ed Warner is chair of GB Wheelchair Rugby and writes at sportinc.substack.com