eSports. Its blown up in the past few years as games, players and teams become ever more popular and high profile. Tournament attendance, online stream views and prize pools have exploded with I5 recently packing out a massive arena, drawing millions of online views and paying out $10 MILLION in prize money. Despite all that, ESPN says eSports isn’t a sport. Its a competition. Nevermind the fact that the word sports is right in the name: e”SPORTS”.

At Re/codes Code/Media Series: New York conference, ESPN president John Skipper was asked to comment on the recent Amazon acquisition of Twitch. His response was as follows:

“It’s not a sport—it’s a competition. Chess is a competition. Checkers is a competition. Mostly, I’m interested in doing real sports.”

While there is clearly a lot of room for this quote to be taken out of context, the overall tone is pretty dismissive when you consider the fact that The International Dota 2 world championship tournament was carried on ESPN 3, ESPN’s online channel. Of course, ESPN probably won’t have a huge impact on the growth of eSports, as recent estimates report that 2.4 billion hours of eSports were viewed during 2013, and the eSports market is estimated to be worth #300 million annually by 2018.

 
And, on a more interesting note, the United States Government officially recognized League of Legends players as professional athletes last year, thereby facilitating their ability to obtain visas.

So, while the definition of sports currently states that it is a physical competition, maybe its time it was changed to just “competition.”

What do you think? Are eSports “real” sports? Sound off in the comments below!