ESPN president says eSport is not a sport

VIDEO game tournaments have bigger prize money than most sports, sell out 10,000 seat arenas and have diehard fans. But apparently they aren’t a real sport.

Starcraft II character.

ESPN President John Skipper doesn’t consider eSports as a sport, he mentioned during the Code/Media Series: New York conference on Thursday, categorising it as a competition along with strategy board games.

“It’s not a sport — it’s a competition. Chess is a competition. Checkers is a competition,” Skipper said, when prompted for his opinion about Amazon’s impending $1 billion buyout of live streaming service Twitch. “Mostly, I’m interested in doing real sports.”

eSports is exploding across all facets and regions it touches. For example, after passing a decision last year, the United States government now recognises League of Legends players as professional athletes. The recent Evolution Championship Series event drew a record-breaking 1.7 million unique online viewers for the biggest fighting game tournament in the world. This year’s Dota 2 tournament, The International 4, reached a record-breaking prize pool of more than $10 million with more than 20 million viewers online in July. The figure excludes viewers on ESPN, MTG Europe, or CCTV China TV.

Take a look at how strategy games, MOBAs and fighters have become a legitimate sport in America. We discuss the major emergent changes happening in the eSports scene in a recent IGN Arena episode.

This article originally appeared on IGN.

Originally published as ESPN president says eSport is not a sport