ESPN's Colin Cowherd on his radio show yesterday criticized the company for airing eSports, saying he would "quit" if ESPN "ever forced me to cover that or do play-by-play." ESPN2 on Sunday aired "Heroes of the Dorm," a tournament final of the computer game "Heroes of the Storm” featuring students from Cal and Arizona State. Cowherd said, “Here’s what’s going to get me off the air: If I am ever forced to cover guys playing video games, I will retire and move to a rural fishing village and sell bait. You want me out? Demand video game tournaments. ... Thanks to a partnership with Blizzard, there was a League of Legends battle for two-and-a-half hours yesterday on ESPN2. So while many of you watched Kevin Harlan and Reggie Miller call the Rockets-Mavericks game on TNT, Artosis and Denine called the ‘Heroes of the Dorm’ game on ESPN2." He added, "Somebody lock the basement door at mom’s house and don’t let them out. I will quit this network if I am ever asked to cover that. I tagged out at Harry Potter. I tolerated Donkey Kong. I’ll tell you what that was the equivalent of … me putting a gun in my mouth and having to listen to that” (“The Herd,” ESPN Radio, 4/27).
E-NOUGH ALREADY: RE/CODE's Eric Johnson noted an "ongoing problem with professional competitive video games" is that they "get little respect from non-players, and even sometimes from ESPN management, even though they command tens of millions of fans around the world and have been known to pack stadiums full of diehards who want to watch top players square off." It is time to "stop forcing games to be 'sports.'" Jamming them into that label and "pushing them onto platforms like ESPN only invites direct comparisons to the traditional sports that more people already know." Johnson: "Calling these games 'sports' is like calling YouTube videos 'TV shows.' All are entertaining, but they’re different in important ways, and it’s to the benefit of eSports to recognize those differences." It is "all well and good that big companies like Blizzard, Valve and Riot are trying to turn this ground-up phenomenon into something bigger," but the "ongoing inferiority complex of 'look, we can be on ESPN, too!' isn’t so good." Yet, it "persists because comparing eSports to 'real' sports is an easier sell to advertisers" (RECODE.net, 4/27).
YOU BET! Unikrn CEO Rahul Sood appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Alley” this morning to discuss his company’s partnership with Tabcorp to create a new platform for eSports and legal gambling. Sood said 205 million people watched eSports, which are “organized sanctioned live-gaming tournaments," and 40% of those people "don’t even play games." Unikrn has a “series of communities, so we've grown our gaming communities from about 2.5 million users to about 9 million users and it’s still growing." Sood: "We've built an arena where people can gather, game and bet on eSports legally.” The wagering will occur in Europe and constitute the “lion's share of the revenue.” Sood said, “I wouldn't call it a threat to sports, but I would say right now the amount of viewers on eSports is about the same amount of viewers as NHL hockey. In 2017, we believe that eSports will be as big as the NFL and it's only getting bigger. What's interesting about eSports is it’s a global viewing audience, whereas the NFL is mostly U.S.” Sood in terms of companies endorsing the eSports athletes, “there are companies that are doing it” but soon “you will see more mainstream” companies become involved “within the next year or so.” CNBC’s Jon Fortt noted, “It's come a long way since the 'Madden' tournament in your basement” (“Squawk Alley,” CNBC, 4/28).
