Esports to be Included in 2018 Asian Games

The Asian Games are the second largest multi-sport event after the Olympic Games and are recognized by the International Olympic Committee. It’s held every four years with participants from forty-six nations. This year, for the first time, esports will be featured as a demonstration sport. This means players won’t be receiving medals, but it’s an amazing first step in the legitimization of eSports and its categorization as a competitive sport. This comes five years after the Chinese StateGeneral Administration of Sports formed an esports national team to participate in the Asian Indoor Games.

The Asian Games esports demonstation will include six videogames:

  • League of Legends
  • Pro Evolution Soccer 2018
  • Arena of Valor
  • Starcraft II
  • Hearthstone
  • Clash Royale

Pro Evolution Soccer 2018 comes from Japanese publisher Konami and Arena of Valor comes from Chinese publisher Tencent.

Arena of Valor and Clash Royale are also both mobile games, a platform whose competitive scene has boomed in the East in comparison to the West. Kings of Glory, the original domestic version of Arena of Valor, has its own competitive esports league called King Pro League (KPL). It has twelve teams and games get an average of 4 to 5 million viewers.

The Asian Games begin August 18th and will be hosted in Jakarta and Palembang, Indonesia, with 462 events in 40 sports.

2 thoughts on “Esports to be Included in 2018 Asian Games

Add yours

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑