The International Olympic Committee has voted to approve the creation of the Olympic Esports Games in its 142nd session. The inaugural event will be hosted in Saudi Arabia in 2025.
The committee voted on creating the games just over a week after the IOC announced its partnership with the National Olympic Committee of Saudi Arabia to host the tournament on July 12. Some fans and industry veterans criticized the initial announcement over the choice of host country.
The IOC voted unanimously to create the new event but has not nailed down any specifics, such as the host city, venue, dates, or which esports titles will be featured.
“This is truly a new era for the IOC. With the confirmation by the IOC Session of the creation of the Olympic Esports Games, we are keeping up with the pace of the digital revolution. The esports community, represented in our Esports Commission, has enthusiastically engaged with this initiative,” IOC President Thomas Bach said in a press release about the decision.
A HISTORIC VOTE!
The 142nd IOC Session votes for the creation of the Olympic Esports Games.
Mark the date 🥳 pic.twitter.com/CPRrwrirba
— IOC MEDIA (@iocmedia) July 23, 2024
The Olympics has had a contentious relationship with gaming and esports over the years leading up to this announcement. In 2018, Bach said that most popular competitive titles like Counter-Strike, League of Legends, and Overwatch were too violent and “contradictory to the Olympic values.”
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In 2021, the international sports body sanctioned a DreamHack event called the Olympic Virtual Series in tandem with the 2020 Tokyo Games that featured “non-physical sports” like Zwift, Virtual Regatta, and Gran Turismo.
Those odd choices of games have continued up to 2023 when the Olympic Esports Series was revealed. The slate of games was expanded for the event but still did not feature any titles that fans associated with esports.
This lack of representation caused the games to be in a weird spot for the esports industry. While the validation from appearing in the Olympics could be a boon to investment, the committee was not keen on adding traditional titles that featured violence or guns.
However, thanks to lobbying from Saudi Arabia and its track record running Gamers8 (now the Esports World Cup), the Esports Olympic Games has been created and could reportedly feature more traditional titles.