Transcriber: David DeRuwe Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
Today is Sumail Hassan's birthday.
Sumail is probably
one of the most interesting 18-year-olds you've never heard of.
Last year, Sumail was named by Time magazine
as one of the top-30 most influential teens.
The reason Sumail was on that list
was because he's one of the best Dota 2 players in the world.
If you're not familiar with Dota 2, it is one of several online video games
where professional teams compete for fame and fortune.
Sumail started playing Dota 2
when he was seven, when he was living in Pakistan.
He didn't have his own computer, so what he would do
is pile up on a motorbike with his cousins and his friends
to go to a local Internet café to play.
Despite these circumstances, Sumail got so good at the game
that he was recruited by a top American esports team
when he was 15.
By the time he was 16, he became the youngest player
to earn more than 1 million dollars in prize earnings,
and a big part of that earnings
was for winning the Dota 2 World Championship in 2015.
His team won 6.6 million dollars for winning first place.
And the future Olympians of tomorrow will include esports players like Sumail,
not because esports is a sport of the future,
but because esports is a sport of today.
Today, professional teams
are competing for millions of dollars in front of millions of fans.
Today, professional esports tournaments are being played at marquee stadiums
like Madison Square Garden in New York City,
Staples Center in Los Angeles, and the Bird's Nest in Beijing.
Today, there are more than 30 sports organizations, globally,
involved with esports,
including teams such as the Philadelphia 76ers, a basketball team in America,
and Manchester City, a football team in the English Premier League.
These sports organizations and their billionaire team owners
are getting involved with esports
because they know that there are more people
watching and playing esports than ever before.
Meanwhile, traditional sports have been declining on both fronts.
Summer Olympic ratings, down 15%.
The National Football League, regular season ratings, down 9%.
English Premier League, down 19%.
Not only are people watching sports less, people are playing sports less.
In the United States, over the past few years,
there are millions of fewer children actively playing team sports.
And one reason why people are watching and playing sports less
is because it is becoming very expensive.
ESPN, which is the top American sports cable channel,
is on track to pay 7.3 billion dollars for rights this year.
That's more than any other company in America.
Meanwhile, they've lost 9 million subscribers since 2013.
For sports participation,
38% of families earning less than $25,000 participate in team sports,
while children from families earning $100,000 or more,
67% of those families participate.
Another study shows that up to 10.5% of a family's gross income
could be spent on sports.
So for a typical family earning the median income in America,
they could be spending up to $5,800.
Besides financial considerations, some people and institutions believe
that esports is actually taking away from sports leadership and participation.
And they are right.
In this study, conducted by Newzoo, 76% of esports enthusiasts
say that the time they spend watching esports
is taking away from the time they would spend watching sports.
And that makes a lot of sense
because younger generations are growing up in front of computers and other devices
rather than a television.
And when we look at digital hours watched,
esports far eclipses traditional sports.
When we compare the Super Bowl,
which is one of the largest sporting events in the world,
with the League of Legends World Championship,
which is the biggest esports event in the world,
the numbers are amazing.
Some 43 million people, unique viewers, watched the League of Legends finals
compared to less than 5 million for the Super Bowl.
And it's not just about watching main tournaments.
On one platform, Twitch, there are over 100 million people who tune in every month
to watch their favorite players and influencers practice and play.
So this image is of a player, a Korean player named Faker,
who is also often called the "Michael Jordan" of esports.
His opponents and his fans alike call him God,
and last month, 245,000 people tuned in to watch God practice.
So for context, that's like saying for your favorite athlete,
whether it's a football or a basketball player,
you'll rather watch him or her practice than compete against an actual team.
And that's part of the reason why the esports audience continues to grow -
you're not just watching matches,
you're watching people practice and just having fun.
Newzoo estimates
that there are 385 million people who will watch esports this year.
That number will grow to 589 million by 2020.
An interesting thing about esports audiences
is that, not only do they watch, they also play.
So for League of Legends, which we mentioned earlier,
there are more people who play League of Legends
than there are people
who live in Germany, France, or the United Kingdom.
It's clear that esports is here, and esports is big.
Thomas Bach, who is the president of the International Olympic Committee,
says he wants to bring sport to the youth
because they have a lot of other options,
and he cannot expect that they will come to sports or come to Olympics.
Mr. Bach is right, and I believe the sport that we should take to youth is esports.
But before we get there, there are three hurdles we must overcome.
The first hurdle is shelf life.
When you think about traditional sports,
it lasts forever - you could play soccer forever.
But esports at its core are video games
that are created and maintained by private game developers.
However, that trend has begun to change as well.
Historically, game developers would develop a game,
put it in a box, and sell it in a store.
And as a customer, I would go in and pay up front,
enjoy that experience, and then come back next year for the second version.
However, now games are being developed as a service,
so game developers wish to update them constantly
to keep gamers hooked for a longer period of time.
And for Steam, the largest distribution platform for online video games,
we saw that in 2016,
50% of their top games were created before 2016.
One of these games is Counter-Strike,
and the last image you saw was what it looked like back in 1999.
This is what it looks like today.
So there has been a lot of incremental improvements
over the past 18 years.
Meanwhile, Counter-Strike is as popular as it has ever been.
Last month, there were more than 1 million people
who tuned in to watch a Counter-Strike tournament.
The second hurdle is organization.
Organization is very important to the International Olympic Committee.
That is why sports such as snowboarding
had to align themselves with the International Ski Federation,
and that's why sports such as BMX
had to align themselves with the International Cycling Union.
Well, we've got a problem in esports
because there are no comparable organizations we can belong to,
so we have to start from scratch.
On the national front, we could look at South Korea as a model.
In 2000, South Korea formed the organization
called the Korean Esports Association, also known as KeSPA.
KeSPA has really grown and evolved with the Korean esports ecosystem.
So they do a variety of things.
First, they preserve competitive integrity.
They actively litigate against match fixers and cheaters,
and they have the ability to ban players for life.
Second, they work with game developers
to promote quality of life for Korean esports players.
So in Korea, professional esports players are guaranteed minimum salaries,
and they have a minimum one-year contract.
The third thing that KeSPA does is it regulates Internet cafés
to combat Internet addiction,
as well as to promote the amateur Korean esports scene.
On the international front,
the International Esports Federation, IeSF, was formed in 2008
with a goal to make esports officially a sport with the Olympics,
and they've done a lot of work, like KeSPA, over the past few years.
There are 46 member countries:
22 member countries recognize esports as a sport today
and the other 24 are in the process of doing so.
Last year, IeSF petitioned the International Olympic Committee
to recognize it as the official organizing body for esports.
The third and most interesting hurdle
is the perception that esports requires little to no physical activity.
Like many of you, as a sports spectator, I grew up thinking that all athletes
need to look something like this, so I was really focused on just the body,
but esports, like sports, involves body, will, and mind.
But, we'll just cover the body first
because many people expect athletes to have muscle.
And this is one of my former players,
Greyson Gilmer.
Greyson Gilmer was a former football player
in high school, from Texas,
before he joined our team as an esports player,
and as you can see, his biceps are bigger than my head.
So, if muscle or physical fitness is a criteria for you,
then we have that in esports.
But I'll be the first to admit
that not every single player in esports looks like Greyson today.
But the trend is going towards more physical fitness
because esports athletes only care about one thing:
they care about winning,
and physical fitness helps them accomplish that.
Finally, you know, esports athletes and just gamers in general
are no longer the nerds that are hiding around in their parents' basement.
They look like this today.
And I think this is a good image that conveys what they look like.
Since we're talking about the Olympics, it's also important to understand
what Olympic athletes think about esports athletes.
Michael Phelps, who has won 23 gold medals,
calls esports athletes, quote, his "fellow athletes."
And he believes that the skill, training, and devotion required
to become an esports athlete makes them athletes as well.
I agree with Michael Phelps, and I saw, firsthand,
how much work it took to become an esports athlete
when I had my own esports team, Ember.
I formed Ember with my cofounder back in 2015
with the idea that we want to put as much infrastructure and support
behind the players,
much like what you would see in traditional sports organizations.
This is what we did on the body, will, and the mind side.
For body, we hired Ryan Swayze, who is a personal trainer in Los Angeles.
And Ryan, for fun, likes to run through fire.
And here's a short clip of what he helped our team do:
(Video)
Ryan Swayze: They're creating a sound body, mind, and spirit.
On your bellies.
Team: Ah! Oh my God!
RS: All the way up.
T: Oh yeah! Ahh! Oh my God!
RS: Breaking up the stigma
of classic gamers just eating Cheetos and drinking Mountain Dew all day.
(Video ends)
Jon Pan: So our players, at first, they doubted the physical training.
But once we started winning games,
they incorporated physical training into their own routines
because they just care about winning.
For mind and will,
we had a combination of help from Jonathan Carter and Walden Greene.
Jonathan Carter, on the left, he is a certified instructor
in the United States Army’s Master Resilience trainers course.
Resilience is very important in esports
because the matches are mentally exhausting.
Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, calls esports five-dimensional chess.
So just as how he trained soldiers and soldiers' families
to cope with deployments and to develop resilience,
he helped our players do the same.
Walden Greene helped us create a high-performance environment
because esports
is not about just clicking your mouse or your keyboard faster to win.
Esports requires a lot of strategy
and, more importantly, real-time strategies to win.
So Walden focused on that for us
through goal setting as well as player communication.
Our team trained 9:00 a.m.,
often until midnight, five to six days a week.
And all of this training is why the United States
started offering athletic visas for certain esports athletes.
All of this training
is why Michael Phelps calls esports athletes "his fellow athletes,"
and all of this training is why esports should be at the Olympics.
[Los Angeles - candidate city Olympic Games 2024]
So what’s next? How do we get there?
The first step
is the International Olympic Committee
should recognize IeSF as the official organizing body for esports.
Second, it would be tremendously helpful
if Los Angeles was selected as the host city for the 2024 Olympics.
And I’m not just saying that because I’m from there.
Los Angeles has a unique abundance
of infrastructure and talent for esports competitions
because some of the top game developers and top esports teams
are located in Los Angeles.
Also, esports is incredibly popular in Southern California.
And having locally popular youth-oriented sports
increases the chances of them being added to the Olympics,
which is why we saw karate, baseball, and skateboarding
added to the Tokyo Olympics.
So, if you agree with me, here's how you can help:
go to change.org,
search for Esports Olympics, and sign my petition.
With your help, we can bring esports to the Olympics
and to really leverage this global phenomenon
in a positive way to improve body, will, and mind
for millions of young people around the world.
Thank you.
(Applause)