The Olympics is embracing esports once again, well, sort of. While esports are not part of the Olympics, the Olympics and Intel are hosting the Intel World Open together with esports competitions for Rocket League and Street Fighter V prior to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. At the Intel Open, $250,000 USD is on the line for each tournament. The Intel World Open finals will be held July 22 – 24, 2020 at Tokyo’s own Zepp DiverCity event venue. It’s great to see a partnership of some kind finally happening and further shows how seriously esports are being taken now.
Intel World Open isn’t the first event like this
Back in 2018, before the Winter Olympic Games held in Pyeongchang, Intel and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) formed a partnership to host Intel Extreme Masters. The game featured back then was Blizzard’s StarCraft II. The fact that they are doing almost the exact same thing once again gives esports a brighter future regarding its relationship with the IOC. The IOC in the past did raise concerns about just what games if any would be featured at the Olympics, citing concerns with FPS and violent video games. Psyonix, Epic Games, and Capcom are all huge players in the video game industry, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out once again before the 2020 Games.
For those interested, online qualifiers will, of course, be held in participating countries. That gives players a chance to be named to their respective home team. Following that the live qualifying event will be hosted in Katowice, Poland sometime in June 2020. Results out of that will deem who goes to Tokyo. It’s quite an exciting time and I am sure will draw in tons of viewers globally.
What are your thoughts on all this? Should esports become an official part of the Olympics someday? Let us know what you think.
