CHENNAI: The summary of a brief vision document put forth by LA24.org, a group trying to bring the Summer Games to Los Angeles in eight years time, has nine words, one acronym and one number. “LA 2024,” it says on the official website, “is about a new Games for a new era.”
The statement may appear to be just another cliché trying to win votes by using tried and tested lines, but they have ambitious plans to take the 33rd Olympiad to places it has never seen. To Include e-Sports, the moniker that has been attached to the broad niche of competitive video-gaming.
It’s a move that will be considered too renegade even for radicals, but it’s a move that is aimed to bring millennials into the Olympic fold. There are no significant details available as to how the LA 2024 plans to go about bringing this under the ambit of the IOC, but a few moves have been silently made this year.
The International e-Sports Federation (IeSF), a South Korean body responsible for governing e-Sports at the highest level, submitted to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) an “Official Letter of Request” on February 19 to be recognised. The IOC got back with a list of dos and dont’s for the Federation, which was formed in 2008, to follow.
The Korean body, which became an official signatory of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in 2013, will take the next step towards becoming Olympics compliant when they undergo their first evaluation next month. “IeSF will submit all related documents for the recognition process and will undergo its first evaluation in December this year,” a release from the body stated.
In the meantime, LA 2024 chairman Casey Wasserman made his intentions clear in a statement issued to the press earlier this month. “LA 2024 fully supports the IOC’s mission to get young people all over the world leading active, healthy lifestyles,” it read. “We view eSports’ immense global popularity and continued advances in digital technologies as tremendous tools for reconnecting millennials with the Olympic movement. The 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Los Angeles – a city always imagining what’s next, where sport, entertainment and technology mix like nowhere else – would enable the IOC to stay at the cutting edge of digital youth engagement.”
Both IeSF and LA 2024 want to live the dream, but there is still a long way to go. For starters, even if it’s going to be a demonstration sport, it may not happen unless and until Los Angeles gets to host it in the first place. The other cities in the reckoning – Budapest and Paris – have not showed much interest in having an e-game tournament.
swaroop@newindianexpress.com