Fans of the Swiss soccer team Young Boys of Bern protested the rise of esports this weekend by throwing dozens of tennis balls and a few PS4 controllers on the pitch 15 minutes into a Swiss Super League game against FC Basel.
The controllers were reportedly etched with the words “F**** ESPORTS” and similar obscenities. Fans of both Young Boys and Basel also held up a giant banner with the symbol for the pause button. The sign stretched across 15 rows in the lower section of the arena.
Young Boys ultras threw tennis balls and PS4 controllers on the pitch during game against Basel to protest eSports pic.twitter.com/N402uKyjLt
— Hipcat (@ScottSlocombe) September 24, 2018
The protest comes as professional sports leagues and teams around the world are investing resources into esports. Traditional teams see esports as complementary to their traditional operations, are tempted by the huge global appeal of these new sports, and see esports as a way to engage a younger, more tech-savvy audience.
Investment in esports is at an all-time high, and that’s been buoyed in part by a sharp rise in investment from traditional sports teams, owners, and executives over the past two years. The NBA recently capped off the inaugural season of its in-house esports league, NBA 2K. The Overwatch League, a league that mirrors the city-based franchise structure of traditional sports, has lured in many top sports executives, including New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, to buy and operate teams. Activision Blizzard, the parent of the Overwatch League, signed a multi-year broadcast rights deal with Disney this past season to televise the league across ESPN, Disney, and ABC; and sold out Barclays Center during its grand finals. Reigning NBA champs, the Golden State Warriors, dropped millions of dollars on building a team this year for the North America League of Legends Championship Series.
In Europe, esports are gaining similar traction. Competitive gaming, via League of Legends and FIFA, has begun infiltrating some of the world’s biggest football clubs. Manchester City launched an esports division in 2016 with the recruitment of an 18-year-old esports player. Other teams have similarly recruited or sponsored esports players to represent their brands in the gaming world, or have begun putting together entire teams to compete in esports leagues. In 2017, AS Roma entered the esports ring through a partnership with Fnatic to build a team for FIFA’s esports league.
Earlier this month, Bracken Darrell, the CEO of hardware maker Logitech, told Business Insider that he thought esports was on track to be the biggest sport in the world. “Much bigger than anything else,” Darrell said. “Even bigger than soccer.”
Of course, some executives remain reluctant or even opposed, with German Football Association President Reinhard Grindel in March saying that “esports are not sports.”
“Soccer belongs on the playing field,” he said, according to The Esports Observer. “Computer stuff doesn’t come into that.”
Despite Grindel’s opposition, a number of professional soccer clubs in Germany now have their own esports teams, including VfL Wolfsburg (FIFA), FC Schalke ’04 (League of Legends) and VfB Stuttgart (FIFA).
SportTechie Takeaway
The bizarre protest this weekend in Switzerland marks one of the first times traditional sports fans have displayed a marked and coordinated opposition to professional gaming. Fans have generally let the trend slide, even while they might continue to debate whether esports should be counted as actual sports. Caught in a whirlwind of new investment and unprecedented coordination between traditional sports and esports over the past few years, the view has generally been that the two industries should work more closely together. Adopting esports seems like a necessary part of doing business in an increasingly tech-savvy age where video game sales are rocketing and ticket sales to live sports have been stagnant or, at times, declining.
Perhaps the Young Boys and Basel protest might set some kind of precedent. The fans may legitimately fear that esports will distract necessary resources away from the pitch, and the fact that both sets of fans held pause signs in approval of the pre-planned protest shows unusual coordination among rivals. Or maybe the esports train will continue to steamroll traditional values and change sports forever.