Stars on the console?

The best earn millions, and when they play, up to a quarter of a million mostly young fans watch: e-sports is a megatrend, a youth culture - and a logical development of digital society.

Full halls, high prize money, millions of fans in front of their screens - e-sports, the competition on games consoles and computers, is booming. Established sports associations have reacted to this development: The football clubs St. Gallen, Basel, Lausanne, Servette and Lucerne have their own e-sports teams. France and Austria even have a virtual Super League.
The world football association has also recognised the potential and is organising the «Fifa eWorld Cup», the official e-World Cup with the «Fifa» game of the same name. Under President Gianni Infantino, Fifa has increased the prize money for the winner tenfold, with 250,000 dollars going to the world champion this August. The 2017 winner, «Gorilla», trains two to three hours a day. And for him, training primarily means playing countless matches against opponents of the same calibre and arranging to meet online.

«Those who are top in fantasy games enjoy legendary status.»

Media expert Michael In Albon

However, fantasy games such as «League of Legends» (LoL) or «Dota» are the absolute hits. Those who are top in these games enjoy legendary status. South Korean «Faker», for example, is watched by over 240,000 people at times and 1.3 million fans follow him on «Twitch», the YouTube of the gaming scene.
And where viewer numbers are rising and the attention is huge, the prize money is also exploding. 109 million US dollars were paid out last year. The German team Liquid, last year's world champion in the game «Dota 2», collected 10.8 million dollars in prize money. Team captain «KuroKy» has since become the highest-earning e-sportsman in the world with a total of 3.5 million dollars in prize money. By comparison, the best Swiss player, «Maniac», has total prize money of 56,000 dollars.

16 hours of training a day

And the training times? Compared to the football game «Fifa», they are significantly longer in «LoL» or «Dota». The best players report up to 16 hours of training a day - eight hours of practice matches against other professional teams plus meetings to test new tactics and develop their own skills; most of them also spend another eight hours training in their free time. Add to that eight hours of sleep and there is hardly a free minute for anything else.
For many teenagers, e-sports is entertainment: they watch professionals compete in their favourite games alone or together. So it's just like other sports? Not quite. E-sports fans are predominantly young, it's a youth culture. Professor Jörg Müller-Lietzkow from the University of Paderborn, who researches the topic of e-sports, calls it a «form of demarcation culture»: young people experience the tournaments as a parent-free zone.

The phenomenon of e-sports can also be explained in social terms: Sport has always served to develop and promote socially relevant skills. And while the industrial age primarily demanded physical strengths, the information and knowledge society calls for mental skills, for the agile handling of information and technology. In this sense, e-sports perfectly reflect this development.
Image: zVg

Important e-sports disciplines

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive: The first-person shooter game, CS:GO for short, is played by several hundred thousand people every day. Tournaments have prize money of up to half a million dollars.
Dota 2: In Dota, short for Defence of the Ancients, two teams of up to five players compete against each other. The strategy game is played on different maps.
Fifa: The best-known sports simulation is played individually or in teams. Various leagues pay prize money of up to a quarter of a million.
League of Legends: A multiplayer strategy game that can be played three against three or five against five, depending on the map. 100 million players play it at least once a month.
StarCraft: The real-time strategy game on various maps is particularly popular in South Korea. Major competitions have a public viewing with up to 20,000 spectators.
Overwatch: The first-person shooter took the gaming market by storm in 2016. Two teams of six players play against each other on different maps.
Rocket League: The virtual football game with cars can be played from one against one to four against four - in a ranked competition or normal mode. There are 46 million registered players worldwide.

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