What Can Sports Learn from Esports

Competitive video gaming has become more than a phenomenon in India – it’s a discipline on its own that can easily rival mainstream sporting events, and even the country’s arguably most popular sport – cricket. As more esports games become available, and Indians seem to take a liking to them, we ought to ask ourselves – is there anything that sports can learn from esports?

Sports and Esports: Overcoming Skepticism

Today, it’s hard to talk about scepticism towards esports, although there are many people who dismiss video gaming as a form of competition. However, esports is closer to traditional sports than you think.

To be successful playing any esports game, you need the same attributes, qualities, and dedication as a mainstream athlete. True, you will exert only mentally and rely on muscle memory without necessarily overcoming great physical feats in a video game, but once contextualized, your efforts will be just as impressive as those of the best sports players out there.

Sports are usually centred around rigorous training regimes, diets, and consistency, but this is precisely what competitive video gaming is today. While you may think that gamers have unhealthy sleeping patterns and eat whatever they can get their hands on, and this used to be true, it’s no longer the case.

Esports franchises today cost hundreds of millions of dollars and leaving your team to underperform because they had an all-nighter playing games is no longer acceptable. All multi-million esports teams are assigned:

• Coaches
• Well-being experts,
• Nutritionists

These experts help them go through the often hard and rigorous training regiments and feel good, succeed, and generally have greater satisfaction with life in the long term.

In essence, sports and esports are so close to each other today in India, that overcoming the scepticism towards competitive video gaming should be fairly easy and there must be no actual challenges to it.

Esports Teaching Sports

If there is one thing that you can learn from esports today as a sports fan or athlete, that is that your passion for a game – be that a physical or computer sport, can drive you to success. Esports and sports athletes often face the same challenges.

They play to make it to the top and get to salaried positions. However, esports is not like sports where the infrastructure has been established for many years now. In fact, many players played just to get better and demonstrate their skills – never making a living out of this.  

If there is one major takeaway that Indian sports can get out of competitive video gaming, it is that dedication and hard work will always pay off and allow you to make the most out of your efforts. However, you have to truly enjoy what you do and not question it, so that you can succeed.

Esports Are a Growing Part of the Mainstream

Not only are esports salaried competitions today. They run prize pools that match those of mainstream competitions. A single Dota 2 event can grant $40 million to participants, which is usually around 16 teams vying for the lion’s share of that prize.

But it’s not just that. Esports can be actually bet on. Indians are huge sports when it comes to sports betting. However, many people are now finding it very enjoyable to place a flutter on competitive video gaming as well.

This is not to say that you have to risk real money either, as many esports betting services use mock-up currencies and are created just for the sake of engagement with fans and crowds. You will have the opportunity to place a flutter as you see fit and actually not unlikely how you would bet on mainstream sports events.

In Conclusion: Are Esports Here to Stay in India?

When you consider India’s sports industry, you can see a successful example of creating competitive structures that allow millions of people to compete and participate in various athletic contests. The country has one of the biggest athletic forces in the world and it is proud of that.

However, as Indians are still very young and even one of the youngest nations in the world in terms of the average age of the population, many people are turning to competitive video gaming, which is perfectly reasonable.

With interest in competitive video gaming climbing, we can expect more opportunities for sports to learn from esports and that is good news for video gamers and those Indians who truly believe in the potential of esports and want to explore it in full.