The International Olympic Committee has officially recognized esports, marking a new era for virtual gaming. The first ever Olympic Esports Games will be hosted by Saudi Arabia in 2025. The CEOs of professional esports organization Ninjas in Pyjamas, Hicham Chahine and Mario Ho joined TheStreet to discuss.
Transcript:
CONWAY GITTENS: So esports going into the Olympics, what does that mean for your business and what does that mean for the industry?
HICHAM CHAHINE: Everything that pushes the industry to mainstream adaptation is great for us, right. It’s back to that we are addressing a Gen Z millennial audience, which is the generations of the future. Those generations are very interested in what we do. And one thing is that it got approved, but I think that this trend is to continue. The Asian Games adopted it this year where we had the first Asian Games, which included esports first time. Now the Olympics is doing that and obviously it brings us the recognition, the eyeballs, the credibility, but I don’t see that trend slowing down anytime soon.
MARIO HO: Esports should be and has now officially been recognized as a sport globally. And with that, you’ll start to see local governments, you’ll see big companies pouring in further investments to build up esports ecosystems because now they have to send their athletes to the Olympics. So for our company, we have multiple different forms of business in esports.
And of course, a central part of that is the esports teams. We run a lot of esports teams across many gaming franchises and we’re hoping as many we’re hoping for as many of those games to get listed into the Olympics so we can send our players there. That in itself will really prove the worth of our academy system, our coaching system. What we have been able to do for players. We’ve sent a few players to the Asian Games last year in Hangzhou, but the Olympics is a bigger stage than the Asian Games.
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