Esports and the Asian Games, who needs whom more?

In one month, the curtain of the Hangzhou Asian Games is about to open. Although it is still early, there seems to be a clear answer to the hottest single event during this year's Asian Games: esports, the darling of young people.

E-sports that debuted in the hall are geared up to show their ambitions; The Asian Games, which initially "turned e-sports positive", need to complete the transformation through this change. Can ambitious ambitions succeed? Can self-seeking transformation achieve breakthrough? At least for now, it's unknown.

1. Top stream and deck

Tickets for e-sports events at the Asian Games will go on sale from August 14 to 15. What does it mean to be sold by lottery? You sign up first, and whether you can buy it or not will be decided by lot. This form is the same as young people snapping up AJ shoes. E-sports has also become the only event that requires lottery tickets at the Hangzhou Asian Games.

After the ticket purchase channel opened, the result was predictable: every channel was quickly filled by the army of ticket grabbers, and related topics even appeared on the Weibo hot search list. Whether you can watch the games live depends on luck without rushing tickets, and e-sports events have created a spectacle in the history of sports.

This is undoubtedly new for other sports, but it is not new for esports. The League of Legends World Championship (S10) held at the Pudong Football Stadium in Shanghai in 2020 adopted a lottery winning strategy, and the winning rate at that time was as low as 0.3%.

Lottery sales have now become almost a measure of the popularity of an esports event. What's more, this is the first time that esports has participated in a multi-sports event as an official project, and the attention can be imagined. In fact, the popularity of esports in the Asian Games is completely traceable: in the previous Asian Games events, a total of 433 athletes from 26 countries and regions participated, and 104 matches generated a total of 650 million views.

Not only the popularity of event tickets, but also the ticket prices highlight the "prestigious" status of esports from the side. It is reported that the ticket prices of each individual event of the Hangzhou Asian Games range from 20 yuan to 1,000 yuan, of which more than 60% of the ticket prices do not exceed 100 yuan, and the average ticket price is 160 yuan. And how much is esports? The minimum is 200 yuan, the maximum is 1000 yuan, and the proper "leading echelon" members are comparable to the men's basketball team's 200-1000 yuan, leaving the men's team's 50-200 yuan behind.

The reason why you dare to "top the price" is because the tickets are not worried about selling at all.

What are "top streams" and "decks"? Esports is a no-brainer, and the popularity of tickets alone makes it possible to predict the craze it may set off during the Asian Games.

Second, still treat esports as a game?

E-sports, which debuted in the "Hall of Elegance", is expected by the Olympic Council of Asia, by athletes, and by a huge fan base. It is no exaggeration to say that in this era of the decline of traditional sports, esports has shouldered the burden of attracting young people to sports.

At the same time, the performance of esports in the Asian Games is also expected by the entire gaming industry. E-sports projects born out of video games carry the expectations of the development of the entire industry, and they need a higher stage and official recognition to achieve higher social status and higher commercial value. At the same time, it still bears the burden of making a name for itself, even though it has worked hard to do so for many years.

To this day, too many people confuse "esports" with "gaming." There are still many old-school ideas that esports are games, which poison the spiritual opium of teenagers, and make children indulge in it, without learning or even go astray. People who hold this view basically know very little about the development of the esports industry today.

E-sports is not as simple as "playing games" in the traditional sense, it has long had a systematic modern operation and management model like traditional sports, and its market size is geometric multiples of most traditional sports.

Those e-sports players who embarked on the path of professionalism have devoted almost all their efforts to the club, carried out a lot of hard training, and trained individual techniques and team cooperation under the guidance of professional coaches. In other words, there is no essential difference between a professional esports player and a professional football player, just a stage for fighting in the green field, and a stage for fighting on the computer screen.

Every year, the S Tournament is similar to the top competitions such as the World Cup and the Champions League, and it is a process in which the top clubs in each division compete for the highest honor. And an S match final may be broadcast several times or even dozens of times more on various domestic platforms.

Why is esports so popular compared to traditional sports? In the final analysis, it is the properties of the project itself that determine its more exciting viewing. Compared to the 90-minute attrition battle that may occur in soccer matches, where the two sides may not shoot more than 10 shots, the pace of esports events will be much faster, and the dense game and explosive points will make the audience more addicted. Comparing esports with football is like the comparison between today's short videos and long videos, although they have their own advantages and disadvantages, but from the perspective of spread, it is clear that the former is superior.

Taking the 7 official competitions of this Asian Games as an example, "Dream Three Kingdoms 2", "Dota 2", "King of Glory Asian Games Version", "FIFA ONLINE 4", "Peace Elite Asian Games Version", "Street Fighter 5", "League of Legends", are all fast-paced and highly ornamental projects. Worthy of the most advanced stage and audiovisual technology, it gives the audience the ultimate immersive viewing experience, although the ticket price is better than other sports, but watching an e-sports event live is like the thrill of participating in a concert, and it is worth the ticket price.

In addition, it must be mentioned that in addition to the game competition itself, the scalability of esports is still very spacious. For example, after an e-sports was buttoned up as a "China-Korea war", the taste was immediately different, and the topic exploded. We have always said that there is no need to win traditional sports in exchange for national pride, but in the eyes of the new generation of young people, it seems that they are still very keen to find the existence of the words "country", "youth" and "blood" through e-sports.

That's why there was a scene at the Asian Games in Jakarta five years ago: even if it was only an exhibition event, when the Chinese team led by Uzi defeated the old rival South Korean team in the League of Legends final, and let the five-star red flag fly on the field, it quickly dominated the Weibo hot search list, and countless people burst into tears, and the heat of the topic was better than the Chinese Legion's gold and silver in any other event.

Third, an attempt to "take what you need"

A popular project that is urgently waiting to set foot in the hall, a comprehensive event that urgently needs new explosive points to develop vitality, it can be said that the combination of e-sports and the Asian Games is a "two-way rush".

The entire e-sports circle attaches as much importance to the entry of the project into the Asian Games, even as much as the annual S Games, and the logic behind it is not difficult to understand: after prying the threshold of the Asian Games, what is the new and higher threshold? The answer is self-evident.

Such a highest-profile multi-sport event in Asia, it is impossible for IOC decision-makers not to pay close attention. What happens in and out of esports can affect the judgment of decision-makers. Is it possible to join the Olympic Games in the future? This is a crucial review. From this point of view, esports is in great need of the Asian Games.

Similarly, the Asian Games are actively embracing e-sports. Because embracing esports means embracing the possibilities of expanding territory.

Since the beginning of this year, there have been various crazy ticket rushes in performing arts markets across the country, and it is even more normal for concert tickets of 1,000 yuan to be speculated to 10,000 yuan. In contrast, the sports market is much more flat, except for the enthusiasm of the Phoenix Mountain football stadium in Chengdu, most of the rest of the situation is still oversupply. Now the entry of esports into Asia has brought some subversive changes, which are also changes that the sports industry has not seen for a long time.

In a word, although it has not yet reached the point of "self-revolution", traditional comprehensive sports events really need the blessing of new blood such as e-sports to burst out new vitality to adapt to the changes of this era.

The mutual need relationship between e-sports and the Asian Games is also a direct presentation of the underlying business logic of today's society: in essence, it is all business, business is not shameful, and how to do this business well is the most important problem that the sports industry needs to think about. Like traditional sports, relying on feelings and policies cannot support the continuous popularity of events, unless you meet absolute superstars like Yao Ming, Liu Xiang, and Li Na, of course, these are encounterable but not sought.

Fourth, can it still be "pure" after holding hands?

Of course, if e-sports wants to bloom in the Asian Games, it is not completely smooth, and it also faces voices that are questioned and denied.

For example, changes in the rules. The Asian Games officially stipulated that e-sports competitions did not allow the use of words such as "kill", which also led to a lot of jokes in the previous Asian Games competition.

The surging commentary style has always been a distinctive calling card for e-sports events, but at the Asian Games, commentators may face much greater difficulty than usual, because they have to change many perennial solving habits, such as replacing "kills and heads" with "points", "guilty pleasure" skills and "super extreme death missiles" big moves can only be replaced by "victory thrill" and "big rocket".

At the same time, during the commentary, the real name of the contestant must be pronounced, not the ID of the player, which will not only make the commentator awkward, but also make the audience listen awkwardly.

One of the simplest analogies: even if you are an amateur who has never participated in e-sports, you must have heard of IDs such as faker and Uzi, but if it becomes Lee Sang-hyuk and Jane Proud... I believe that many people will be black question mark faces.

No way, these are the compromises that esports must make in order to be in the theater. But in the eyes of many esports fans, this is unacceptable, has lost its original taste, and this compromise is a kind of "compromise" that makes the project they love and are passionate about become no longer pure.

"I'd rather not enter the Asian Games than accept such a change", there are not a few people who hold this view, in their opinion, their own e-sports circle is large enough, even if there is no stage like the Asian Games, it will not prevent them from living well.

Echoing this segment of esports fans are similar voices among traditional sports fans. Not all traditional sports fans are willing to embrace the new addition of esports. In their view, (accepting e-sports) is the embodiment of the Asian Games bowing to capital and the market, and if sports are ultimately reduced to capital games, then the definition of the word "pure" is also lost.

Such disputes will continue, and it will be difficult to have a standard answer, and it will be difficult for one party to fully convince the other.

Overall, this is a historic moment for esports and for the Asian Games, with more possibilities for the future being broadened, and more possibilities for stormy criticism, and everything will be answered through the arena in a month's time.