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E-sports and sports, a date with innovation

The fact that e-sports are an economic and social phenomenon is beyond dispute at this point.

Business figures, followers, audiences, and event attendance, among others, continue to soar.

What interests us here are the opportunities for innovation that this phenomenon offers to the sports sector. And I don't want to step into a hornet's nest. I'm aware that mentioning e-sports and sports in the same sentence is a good way to provoke, at the very least, suspicious looks from an important part of the sports world, let's say, as we
know it.

There is a certain reluctance to consider e-sports as sports. The arguments against are clear: the high level of violence in some of the most popular e-sports and the lack of physical activity of those who practice them. To the latter, it can be argued that the physical and mental exertion caused by e-sports is tremendous. After all, professional e-sports teams follow training routines, mental preparation, and recovery regimens that are quite similar to those of high-level sports teams and athletes in many disciplines.

We can also reflect on the high level of mental capacity, sensory skills, reaction speed, anticipation, game vision, and others, required for e-sports.

If traditional sports, as we know them, have led us to explore and push the physical and physiological capabilities of the body and mind, it doesn't seem far-fetched to say that e-sports will do the same with sensory capabilities.

But, beyond those reflections and the opportunities for innovation they bring, I want to talk about exergaming. Exergaming is a movement that seeks to combine the best of e-sports and traditional sports: the enjoyment and playability of the former with the widely recognized benefits of physical exercise. It's an exciting space of innovation aimed at getting people moving and enjoying it.

The idea is for individuals to interact with a virtual, augmented, or immersive reality platform through the exercise they perform. The most well-known approach is
through devices like Kinect that capture movement. However, solutions are being developed that use sensors to turn exercise or sports equipment, such as an ergokayak, into interfaces with exercise or gaming platforms. It's not just about moving anymore; it's about overcoming resistance. It's about exerting force.

In that line, instrumented cycling rollers for training are a good example. It's possible to climb Alpe d'Huez without leaving home, feeling the toughness of its 21 turns in your legs. For a few years now, online cycling championships have been held on virtual routes through different locations around the world or in virtual worlds like the island of Watopia, where the first championship took place (developed by the online cycling and running platform Zwift).

It's a field in continuous evolution, and cases of technological doping have already been detected (and penalized). These are individuals who manipulate their data during online races.

As we can see, it's a great enhancer of innovation in a broad sense of the word.

But exergaming wants to go further. Perhaps following in the footsteps of parkour and other urban sports, it seeks reasons to move based on enjoyment, away from more classical sports. On November 29, 2002, in the context of the ISPO sports fair in Munich, the first Gaming World Championship on a bicycle was held on the Kinix platform (http://www.kinix.jp/) with participants from different countries around the world.

I like to think that we will agree that in this space where e-sports and traditional sports meet, an exciting future awaits us, full of opportunities for innovation.

12/01/2023
Enrique Alcántara/ HUB 4ICVESPORT

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