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ESCANABA -- In Paris, an arena that has hosted Britney Spears, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, and Ariana Grande is darkened.
Lights flash on to illuminate a stage with a pedestal. The lights focus briefly on the golden trophy sitting on it before darting away.
Fog rolls across the stage floor as the lights focus on two banks of cellists and the music begins.
The enormous screen above the stage lights up and begins to play a retrospective.
Two teams enter to the screams and applause of the audience, high-fiving their fans as they come out of the tunnel.
This opening ceremony has been repeated, and will be, countless times and in a plethora of sports.
Although, using the word "sport" to describe this event, may confuse some people. This particular scene played out at the League of Legends 2018 mid-season invitational finals.
If you're hesitant to label video game competitions a sport, I just have one thing to say: give me a few minutes to change your mind. I'll touch on four points, two tangible and two nebulous, to try and sway you.
The first, and most easily quantifiable, is the issue of money. To start off, the invitational mentioned previously had a total prize purse of $1,370,520 distributed amongst 14 teams, with the first-place finisher winning over $500,000.
The current projections for 2019 revenue for the global esports market are north of $1 billion. For an industry less than 10 decades old in its current incarnation, the prospects aren't looking too bad.
Starting last year with its inaugural season, the Overwatch League (which focus on the game Overwatch specifically) fielded a set amount of teams and had a regular and post-season. Players signed contracts and were guaranteed a salary, benefits, and a share of the team's winnings and revenue. The Overwatch League had a total pool of $3.5 million in prizes, with the top team winning $1 million.
Clear organization and monetization of esports are good indicators of popularity, but, by itself, it couldn't be considered good evidence for esports being an actual sport.
As for popularity, the invitational boasted 60 million unique viewers. For reference, Super Bowl 53 drew just over 100 million viewers. In fact, it's projected that esports viewership will overtake every sport except the NFL by 2021.
So, people are making money off of it and people are going out of their way to watch it. These are the easy, factual aspects of the situation, but they don't touch on the heart of the matter.
Esports may have the trappings of current sporting giants, but is it actually a sport?
The first contention may be playing video games isn't a physical pursuit. However, there has been some research on the matter, and a 2016 study from the German Sport University found the bodies of esports players mirrored the conditions of athletes engaged in their respective sport.
In the study, they tested the mental strain of competition by looking at the stress hormone cortisol. They found that the levels between esports professionals and race car drivers were essentially the same.
In addition, it found that their pulses could reach as high as 160 to 180 beats per minute. This would be equivalent to the heart rate of the average marathon runner.
Beyond the stresses, esports also generally require high reflexes, dexterity, tactical thinking and multitasking. For a game played with a mouse and keyboard, players can reach 400 operations per minute compared to about 100 operations for the average person.
This requires them to respond to stimulus in the game, consider their most advantageous course and execute it all while performing operations asymmetrically (i.e. each hand is performing a separate action).
There is another aspect similar to more physically inclined sports. Past your mid-20's, reflexes begin to deteriorate and reaction times lengthen.
Realistically, with reaction time being the main physical component, the career of an esports player ends somewhere between 25 and 30. Similarly, the average retirement age for the NFL is around 35.
The final and most murky is: who are the younger generations talking about? Specific sports rise and fall on the backs of the next generation, and all you have to do is ask one of them who Ninja, Tfue, or Dr. Disrespect is. The esports fandom religiously watches their chosen personalities play and dissects it, much like any other.
Ultimately, esports, whether or not they're a "true" sport, are here to stay, and they have quite a following.