Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. will "promote the inclusion of competitive video games as an Olympic sport," just as long as they are not "violent or gory," according to Lulu Yilun Chen of BLOOMBERG. China’s biggest e-commerce company, which operates an esports business and is a sponsor of the Olympic Games through '28, is "pushing" for football, car racing and other games to be endorsed as an official competitive sport, AliSports CEO Zhang Dazhong said. That move "could bar some of the world's biggest titles from the Olympics," such as League of Legends and PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds, which are "both distributed by Alibaba's competitor Tencent Holdings Ltd. in China." Zhang said, "In our communication with the Olympics committee, we've come to have a better understanding of their values, which is to promote peace. That's why for the future development of esports, we will focus more on titles that are actually related to sports, instead of games that focus on violence and slaughter." Alibaba, which is investing 300M yuan ($47M) in esports in the year through March, is hosting the World Electronic Sports Games this week, where an IOC member will attend to observe (BLOOMBERG, 3/13). GAMES INDUSTRY's Matthew Handrahan reported AliSports has worked with the Olympic Council of Asia to "get professional gaming accepted as a medal event" at the 2022 Asian Games. As such, it is in an "influential position when it comes to getting esports into the Olympic Games" (GAMES INDUSTRY, 3/13).
