Is cybersport a profession?

Cybersport is a sport paradox. It is popular all over the world and is based on the principles characteristic of any sports field: train, follow the rules, and the strongest will win. But at the same time, cybersportsman does not need outstanding physical abilities to win - strategic thinking, speed of reaction and a computer connected to the Internet - these are his tools.

E-sports is team and individual competitions in video games, and for many they still seem to be useless entertainment. Meanwhile, today such contests gather thousands of spectators, their prize fund reaches millions of dollars, and the volume of this market is steadily approaching a billion.

The prize fund in e-Sports reaches millions of dollars, photo WEB

The top 3 most profitable games are Dota 2, Counter Strike and Fortnite, but computer sports owe their birth to the iconic "shooters" of the 90s - Doom 2 and Quake. The first tournaments on them were held in 1997 in the United States and gradually captured Europe, Asia and Russia. Now, competitions are organized everywhere and in a variety of disciplines, including strategies, simulators of real sports, shooters, RPGs and more.

Virtual athletes earn real money from games and regularly train to improve their skills, so the question is more and more often raised among them - whether e-Sports is a profession? Alas, WHO considers addiction to video games to be a disease, and until recently the governments of many countries agreed with it. For example, the Chinese have long struggled with this phenomenon and organized special institutions in which millions of Chinese were treated for gambling addiction. However, the program turned out to be ineffective, and the country's leadership approached the problem from the other side - at the beginning of this year, cybersport in China was recognized as an official profession.

Cybersport - the official profession in China, photo WEB

Chinese gamers will now be called game operators and professionals. Under the first means those who organize and promote e-Sports events, and game professionals are, in fact, the players, their coaches and analysts. Now gamers also have responsibilities - participation in championships and game development, data analytics, and marketing of new and already released game projects. Since e-Sports has become the official profession in China, a busy e-Sportsman will now pay taxes.

However, the fact that e-Sports is a profession, the world community still doubts. But the Chinese users of social networks have noted that they are happy to retrain into cybersportsmen, if this gives an opportunity to earn money. However, Chinese residents understand that between amateurs and gaming professionals there is a big difference: “Those who claim to get a job must be true masters of their work”, the Chinese say.

Cyber sportsmen should train regularly, photo WEB

Many of them are inspired by the game Lu Yao - the country's leading gamer at Dota 2, who earned $ 2 million last year. Last year, the total winnings of Chinese players amounted to $ 15.6 million, and only American players earned more - $ 27.8 million. Gamers from many countries, for example, German Kuro Tahasomi (Dota2), Brazilian Gabriel Toledo (CS), Korean Lee San Hyuk (League of Legend) and others beat out their own millions in different disciplines.

Russian cybersportsmen are not far behind foreign ones and are actively developing - the Computer Sports Federation has been operating for 19 years and has held about a thousand tournaments of various levels. Many of the participants of such contests earned their first fees while still being schoolchildren, and most successful Russian gamers are from 18 to 28 years old. Russia, by the way, became the first country to recognize cybersport, and this happened in 2001. Today, popular players such as Aleksei Solo Berezin, Yegor Flamie Vasilyev and others, according to the terms of their contracts, monthly earn six-figure numbers in rubles, not counting the winnings.

Lu Yao - China's Leading Gamer, photo WEB

However, despite the fact that e-Sports has become a profession in China and is gaining popularity in the world, it will not be included in the program of the Olympic Games. "These competitions have their own value, but they have nothing to do with sports", said the German sports minister. Some participants in the discussion stated that the nature of e-sports is no different, for example, from knitting. Nevertheless, already last year it was included in the Asian Games, and in the competitions of 2022, the participants will compete for medals.

What will change in the world by this time, and will computer sports be considered a professional activity somewhere else? It is likely, because the International E-Sport Federation (IESF) promotes it and is actively fighting to raise the standards of its competitions. But let's not guess, wait and see!

Victoria Romanova, Russia, Moscow

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