Esports March On: Nike Jumps In With Glitzy Ad While Forbes Ponders If Esports Will Be Our New Pastime

from the game-on dept

Esports continues to march down the path toward greater adoption. As we've detailed over many posts, esports had already become a cultural thing heading into 2020. But if anyone expected a regression back to IRL sports, the COVID-19 pandemic essentially cemented the cultural adoption of competitive video gaming. With even greater adoption by IRL professional sports leagues, and with many widely used social media platforms getting in the game and accelerating all of this, esports have continued to hit impressive milemarkers that showcase just how big this is all becoming.

It's not slowing down. Signs of that acceleration can be seen first in a glitzy advertisement Nike has put out as it too jumps further into esports gaming.

The shoemaker has released its first-ever esports ad, coming out of Nike Greater China, showcasing how these esports athletes get their minds and bodies prepared for the challenge.

The ad shows gaming superstar Uzi – who was recently the first esports athlete to be signed by Nike – completely a rigorous (and highly entertaining) training camp. According to Nike, the ad is a reminder for these gamers to remain active and healthy in order to stay on top of the challenges of gaming – which can see top players putting in 16-hour days six days a week.

Nike jumping into this is no small thing. And, while this is an ad for the Chinese marketplace, it would be quite surprising given esports' trajectory if we didn't see this sort of thing in the West before long.

Along those lines, Forbes has also come out with an article asking if esports will soon be America's chief pastime.

Compared to America’s most popular pro sports, football, basketball and baseball, Esports is small, but it now ranks with popular sports entertainment like wrestling. In 2019, according to esportsobserver.com, over $211M was awarded from over 4,000 Esports tournaments, an increase of 29% from 2018’s $163M prize pool.

...

Gaming is universal. The rules of the games are simple. It is simply the essence of competition. When produced for television, broadcasters can support the action with commentary, stating objectives for the game on-screen. Like golf, knowledge of the games might not be necessary at all as a games player base might be large enough to sustain eSports broadcasts, making non-player spectators a bonus, learning rules as they watch. Segments can support rules and strategies and highlights.

Will esports reach the vaunted levels for America's attention that baseball, basketball, and football have achieved? It's certainly on that trajectory. And the fact that publications like Forbes are even asking this question of a sport that has existed widely for less than two decades is telling. What esports really has to avoid is becoming the new World Series of Poker, where the fad fizzled out after a few years and is now relegated to niche status, albeit still popular.

But as the post points out, gaming is becoming universal. It's already overtaken other forms of entertainment as the dominant force among young people. Why that wouldn't translate into even further spectatorship of esports tournaments, now propelled by major brands and funding, is a question I cannot answer.

Filed Under: covid-19, culture, esports, pandemic, pastimes, sports
Companies: nike

As COVID Highlights U.S. Broadband Failures, State Bans On Community Broadband Look Dumber Than Ever

from the get-out-of-the-way dept

We've noted for fifteen-plus years how entrenched telecom monopolies literally write state telecom laws that ban towns and cities from building their own broadband networks. Even in cases where incumbent monopolies refuse to deploy service. This has gone hand-in-hand with endless (and false) claims that community-run broadband networks are are some kind of vile socialist boondoggle. In reality, data shows these home-grown networks routinely offer faster, cheaper, and better service, in large part because they're run by folks with an active, vested interest in (and direct accountability to) the communities they operate in.

That's not to say community-run broadband networks are some mystical panacea, or the answer to the broadband problem in all markets. But it is a successful niche solution for areas out of reach of broadband, and it can help drive competition to markets neglected by incumbents like AT&T, Verizon, or Comcast. As COVID and remote learning/working further highlights the sorry state of U.S. broadband, it's been interesting to watch a steady shift in awareness that just maybe letting giant telecom monopolies write state law to stifle creative broadband alternatives wasn't a good idea.

Fixing the "broadband digital divide" will require a huge array of different options. Case in point: Springfield, Missouri is building a fiber optic network for the city, and struck a public/private partnership with CenturyLink which will then lease access on the network. The result: better, faster, cheaper service.

"Last year, the city announced a public-private partnership with internet service provider CenturyLink to expand broadband access. Springfield is building its own fiber-optic network, which uses light signals to provide faster internet speeds than standard copper wire networks—a significant step up in the broadband quality available to many residents. CenturyLink will lease bandwidth on the network, and take over the day-to-day business of selling high-speed internet to residents.

Before the partnership, CenturyLink, which has lobbied against municipal broadband networks, didn’t have plans to expand to Springfield. It would have required a risky infrastructure investment in a market with established competitors, AT&T and Mediacom. Now, Springfield doesn’t have to wait for a private company to decide it would be profitable to install a fiber optic network for every resident—the city built the network as a public service, and then induced an internet service provider to come run it."

Granted many ISP-backed state laws block public/private partnerships as well. And CenturyLink's lobbyists have played a starring role in pushing these laws for the better part of two decades. In Missouri, AT&T once tried to bury provisions hamstringing community broadband into an unrelated traffic ordinance. This kind of stuff, in addition to an endless wave of costly industry lawsuits, often saddles these projects with numerous legal and financial burdens.

When these networks (sometimes) then struggle, the telecom sector employs an army of consultants, academics, and think tankers to then celebrate a failure they directly contributed to. From there, they try to (falsely) argue that such projects are a guaranteed taxpayer funded fiasco. In reality, the only real goal is to protect incumbent monopolies from competition, change, or creative innovation. It's a dumb cycle of bad faith and corrupt dysfunction that has helped derail broadband progress in this country for the better part of two decades.

But as COVID-19 drives home the fact that broadband is essential for survival, I'm starting to see the effectiveness of the industry's arguments in this arena fall short. And as Congress is pressured to take broader action, and begins asking questions about why we've spent billions in monopoly subsidization for networks routinely only half deployed, industry-written state laws hamstringing competition will only get harder to pass, defend, or justify.

Filed Under: access, broadband, competition, covid, digital divide, municipal broadband