A while back I wrote an article about how one ESPN talent ripped on the “Heroes of the Dorm” tournament hosted by Blizzard that was aired on ESPN. On his show that talent talked about how eSports should not be be shown on ESPN because it is not a “real sport”. My rebuttal was that if eSport shouldn’t be on ESPN then the National Spelling Bee, Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, or the annual Madden NFL cover vote should not be on their airwaves as well.
Oh my, how things have changed in such a short time. ESPN’s Sportscenter not only briefly mentioned the International DOTA 2 Championship round — the event, dubbed “TI5” (for the 5th annual competition) was actually streamed on the WatchESPN app throughout the weekend — they actually had a full segment to discuss and cover it. For me, that was pretty shocking.
I think it’s a good idea right about now to thank Robert Flores for not only doing his job covering the topic but actually try to sell the notion that eSports is a real thing and that eSport players could potentially be considered athletes. (We can go into a discussion about if they are athletes or not but that’s another topic for another time.)
Finally, congrats to team “Evil Geniuses” on winning the International DOTA 2 Championship! Don’t spend your money in one place! Unless that one place is a bank, because you could probably do well to put your money in there for a while.
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