The Gamification of Sport

I recently unsubscribed from the push notifications sent by the Premier League app. My memory of the app had all but faded until a flurry of messages came buzzing through while I was on a work call. I glanced down at my screen expecting to see a thread of WhatsApp messages but instead, I was provided match updates of Tottenham crashing out of the ePL Invitational. While upset to see Spurs miss out on yet another trophy, my disappointment lay mostly with the Premier League for pushing such a trivial result on me as if it equated to an actual game.

The Premier League, like many sports leagues and broadcasters, has turned their attention to the world of e-sports - suddenly viewing their geeky, pale cousin as a tolerable play-mate. The LCS playoffs recently aired on ESPN2 marked the first time League of Legends have appeared on any of ESPN's live television channels. E-sports have even garnered the attention of high-profile sponsorship deals in recent weeks. BMW have partnered with the top five e-sports organisations in the world competing in League of Legends. The issue is, just 3% of consumers older than 18 have started watching e-sports content as a result of Covid-19, according to research from McKinsey & Company.

"An e-sport is a multiplayer video game played competitively for spectators, typically by professional gamers."

 With mainstream sports around the world on hold, people are increasingly turning to gaming to fill the empty hours of lockdown and isolation. However, it is specifically online gaming that is drawing greater fan engagement rather than e-sports. Across the 25 markets studied by WARC, 16% of these consumers say they are gaming more and 4% for the first time. Watching e-sports content is more popular than online gaming in just one market: South Korea.

"Gaming is defined as simply the action or practice of playing video games."

This article is not to say that e-sports have no value. Rather, e-sports alone are not going to be sport's silver bullet. There have been numerous developments away from mainstream sports that have drawn huge engagement. One such platform is Zwift, an online cycling and running physical training platform that enables users to interact, train and compete in a virtual world. During the lockdown, professional cyclists, such as Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas, have been using the platform to ride alongside their fans.

On April 23rd, more than 12 million players of the battle-royale video game Fortnite put down their guns to watch a digital avatar of Travis Scott teleport around a beach, tower against a blood-red sky, and launch audience members into outer space during as he performed a concert within the game. Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, have managed to be ahead of the curve on a number of occasions already. Back in late 2018, the maker of the popular game announced it had struck a deal with the NFL. As a result, fans can purchase a jersey of any of the 32 NFL teams and add a number (from 1-99). The cost of each 'virtual' jersey is equivalent to around $15 in real money.

We are in an era of gamification. Sports that have an equivalent online game such Basketball (NBA2k), Football (FIFA), and Formula 1 (F1 Mobile Racing) are at a significant advantage over sports with less mainstream games. However, they must look beyond presenting e-sport in the same traditional way that they present live sport. Zwift and Fortnite provide two such examples of elevating fan engagement beyond what would be possible in a traditional sport setting. The Premier League, along with every other major sports league, should be taking notes.