After more than a year of silence, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its partner Intel confirmed on Wednesday 5 May that the esports tournaments on Rocket league and Street Fighter V, planned on the sidelines of the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, will be maintained on the sidelines of the edition to be held from July 23 to August 8. According to the announcement published on the Olympics website, the two tournaments will be organized entirely online, in formats adapted to the health situation.
The competing teams and players will represent their countries or regions and will compete in two qualifying stages in June, then in the finals from July 11 to 14 for Rocket League and from 16 to 21 for Street Fighter V. The sum of 250,000 dollars (approximately 207,000 euros) of reward will be distributed between the best players of each of the two competitions, which will end a few days before the start of the Olympic Games.
Although this competition takes place during the Tokyo Olympics, it does not actually fit into the event schedule. These tournaments will take place within the framework of the Intel World Open, a tournament organized for the occasion and which allows the IOC to get closer to the discipline without necessarily including it in the program of the Games.
Interests in virtual sports
This operation had already been implemented during the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang in 2018, with the organization of a tournament on the strategy game. Starcraft II. This year, the two selected games were chosen for their readability and ease of understanding the rules – even for an uninformed audience.
Rocket league is a wacky adaptation of football with a huge ball and cars instead of players; and Street Fighter V is the latest installment in a series of hugely popular fighting games for thirty years, the goal of which is to bring down your opponent.
At the end of April, the IOC had already announced the arrival of another electronic sports competition, the “Olympic Virtual Series”, a tournament which favors simulations of real sports. A virtual nautical race supervised by the World Sailing Federation will be held thanks to the simulation Virtual Regatta. Motorsports will not be left out: the license Gran Turismo will host a race organized with the support of the International Automobile Federation. The Olympic Virtual Series will also host cycling events on the Zwift platform, a simulator that also allows you to participate in online bike races.
With these competitions, the IOC is realizing its interest in virtual sports, without however fully engaging in esport and its major video games such as complex strategy games. League of Legends or the shooting game Counter-Strike. Worried about the growing disinterest of the younger generations, several sports federations have already taken a first step towards esport in recent years.