ESports seeks Olympic promised land
ASHGABAT: Newly-elected Asian eSports Federation (AeSF) president Kenneth Fok is determined to prove to the world that eSports – chiefly consisting of multiplayer computer games — deserve to be granted Olympic status.
But the 38-year-old Oxford graduate from Hong Kong, who spoke to AFP after his election to the Asian Electronic Sports Federation post on Monday, stressed he was under no illusions about the enormity of the challenge.
“Our vision is to put eSports on the map and ultimately be on the Olympic agenda but a lot of sports are competing for the same seat in the arena,” Fok said in his first interview since being elected as AESF chief.
“There are lots of skills and attributes that point to it being a sport,” he said on Tuesday.
“You’re talking about endurance, you’re talking about teamwork, between four, five, six people, you talk about reaction time. Yes you’re not actually sweating, you’re not outdoors but it has plenty of other attributes that make it a sport.”
Electronic sports is a booming industry worth billions of dollars and played by hundreds of millions of people around the world. It will also be a full medal sport at the 2022 Asian Games in China.
However, many traditional sporting leaders — including the membership of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) — have been cool on its claims to be a genuine sport.
Fok was elected as federation chief unopposed after Kazakhstan’s veteran sports administrator Natalya Sipovich stepped down after a decade in the role during the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games currently taking place in Turkmenistan.
“We needed a younger person to take the sport to the next level and Kenneth is the right person,” she told AFP.
While Fok admitted they are “still a long way away” from their goal of taking gamers all the way to the Olympic podium, he has some powerful backers, including China’s AliBaba.
Electronic sports have been contested at the Asian Indoor Games organised by the Olympic Council of Asia for a decade and will debut as a full medal sport at the 2022 Asian Games, to be held in Hangzhou, AliBaba Group’s home.
But while the commercial future of eSports looks assured, Fok faces a sizeable task bringing it into line with other disciplines already part of the Olympic family. AFP