Olympic Esports Series 2023 — VR meets esports in IOC’s attempts to give industry wings

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The Olympic Esports Series, organized by the International Olympic Committee, ended on Sunday after three days of action across ten-plus competitions. As the first tentative step of the international body to legitimatize esports with the Olympic umbrella, it was a fairly positive exercise, with the Rocket League competition attracting the most interest.

The OES, a reflection of the IOC's vision for the future of esports, showed the world the massive potential for video games as legitimate, healthy,  and interesting sports. One big tweak was that instead of featuring popular esports titles like League of Legends, Valorant, and FIFA, it had tournaments in simulations of real-world sports like VR Table Tennis, board games like chess, and social games like Just Dance.

The inaugural finals of this event — part of the Olympic Esports Week that ran from June 22 to June 26 — saw participants from worldwide gather at the Suntec Convention Centre in Singapore. Exhibitions for Rocket League, NBA 2K23, Street Fighter 6, Virtual Table Tennis, and the Arena Games Triathlon were part of the virtual sports experience for these disciplines:

• Archery (Tic Tac Bow: Archery PVP)
• Baseball (WBSC eBASEBALL: Power Pros)
• Chess (Chess.com)
• Cycling (Zwift)
• Dance (Just Dance)
• Motor sport (Gran Turismo)
• Sailing (Virtual Regatta)
• Shooting (Fortnite)
• Taekwondo (Virtual Taekwondo)
• Tennis (Tennis Clash: Multiplayer Game)

Unsurprisingly, Rocket League was the most popular of these events, hitting 22K Peak Viewers and being the only discipline to do five digits for this and the Hours Watched metric. A big reason for its success was the co-steams of French star content creator Kamet0, who also co-owns the esports organization, Karmine Corp. Also, knowing that this vehicular soccer video game is one of the most popular esports competitions the world over, its place atop the mountain at the Olympic Esports Series was almost a given.

Fortnite, with no PvP action as the rules saw players undergoing target shooting and in-game navigation, seemed to suffer for this change, doing less than 1K PV and barely getting past 1K HW. Interestingly, the Taekwondo Finals ended up as the third-most-popular event, with Chess — enjoying an online renaissance since the pandemic era — finishing as second on this ranking.

Considering the numbers put up by some of the biggest esports events, these stats may not stack up well, but they are pretty solid for a first-time effort. With the right push and the backing of big companies that also partner with the IOC, the esports wing of the Olympics can definitely reach higher peaks.

Who knows, perhaps fans might get to see the world's best esports pros duke it out under the mythical banner of the five rings one day. Until then, they can be a part of the fledgling growth of esports under the Olympic charter.