The games industry may be surging, having recently generated more money than movies and North American sports combined, but enthusiasm for esports has ebbed and flowed. Now, though, competitive gaming will get a jolt of recognition: The International Olympic Committee has just formalized the Olympic Esports Games, with the first scheduled for 2025 in Saudi Arabia.

Complicating the picture for the IOC: the themes of violence that run through many video games, and a political environment in Saudi Arabia that's hostile to LGBTQ+ individuals.

The IOC hasn't decided on the exact location and dates or, most importantly, which video game titles the esports athletes will be competing in. In the past, professional esports competitions have mostly been title-specific tournaments, including huge international efforts like the League of Legends World Championship and the Dota International. 

The last couple of decades have seen esports leagues rise and fall, from the US-specific Major League Gaming (acquired by Activision Blizzard and now owned by Microsoft) to publisher-sponsored organizations like Activision Blizzard's Overwatch League.

Large-scale professional gaming competitions have been pushed mostly by game publishers and esports leagues, but the IOC has been exploring esports since 2017, culminating in the Olympic Esports Week in Singapore in 2023 and a subsequent request to study the creation of a formal Olympic Esports Games. 

The IOC Esports Commission said in a release Tuesday that it has "devised a project which addresses the interest of the esports community while respecting the Olympic values. This is particularly true with regard to the game titles on the programme, the promotion of gender equality and engagement with the young audience, which is embracing esports."

Esports reviving the Olympics

Appealing to younger fans has been a priority for the IOC, leading it to adopt new event categories in recent Olympics. In 2020, the traditional Games added surfing, skateboarding and sport climbing, while breaking (what had been known as breakdancing) is debuting at the 2024 Paris Olympics. The IOC has been looking into esports as traditional sports audiences age — a MarketWatch report in 2017 noted that the average NBA viewers were in their early 40s, while average NFL and MLB viewers were in their 50s. 

But even as the IOC Esports Commission formed to explore how it might integrate competitive gaming into the Olympics, questions arose about whether that marriage would work. Many of the top esports titles are violent first-person shooters, which goes against Olympic values of peaceful competition -- the IOC flatly stated a year ago that games from the Counter-Strike and Call of Duty series would never be included in Olympic Esports, according to The Jakarta Post. While the IOC formalizing the Olympic Esports Games seems to put the debate to bed about whether virtual competition is a sport, siloing esports into their own event, away from the traditional Olympics, does send a complicated message. 

The most pertinent question is whether gamers will flock to esports if they're hosted by the Olympics, or if they'll just continue watching tournaments and leagues that have been built up by the games industry and esports enthusiasts. 

"Years ago I said, 'The Olympics needs esports more than esports needs the Olympics,' and I still stand by that statement," said Rod Breslau, an esports and gaming consultant. 

"However, there is no denying that esports officially being at the Olympics, and even the creation of its own games, is another major stepping stone in establishing competitive gaming as a 'real thing' to the mainstream," Breslau added. "Video games at the Olympics is validation for an entire generation of kids that grew up playing Street Fighter, Quake or StarCraft."

Esports Olympics in Saudi Arabia

Tuesday's announcement focused on Saudi Arabia's role in hosting the first esports Olympics, which spokespeople for the country said is a natural extension of Saudi Arabia's support for traditional sports and efforts to reach young athletes. 

"Our commitment to esports is simply a reflection of the world our young people live in," Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Faisal, minister of sport and president of the Saudi Arabian Olympic and Paralympic Committee, said in the press release. "We now all have the chance to write new Olympic history together, the chance to inspire new dreams and new ambitions for literally millions of athletes around the world."

Saudi Arabia has 23.5 million gamers and almost half are female, said Princess Reema Bandar Al-Saud, who's on the board of directors of the Saudi Arabian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and is president of the Women's Committee.

Saudi Arabia has been ramping up its investments in esports over the past several years, culminating in the 2024 Esports World Cup that kicked off July 3 and runs through Aug. 25. But that event has proved divisive as players, streamers and fans have protested and boycotted the championship, according to the BBC, because of hostility toward LGBTQ+ people on the part of the country, where same-sex acts are punishable by death.

Similarly, earlier this year advocacy groups protested the United Nations for appointing Saudi Arabia to lead the UN commission on women's rights, citing the kingdom's "abysmal" record in that realm, The Guardian reported. Though Saudi Arabian authorities have attempted reforms in recent years, like the 2022 Personal Status Law, Amnesty International criticized the legislation for entrenching "gender-based discrimination in every aspect of family life."

The IOC defended its decision to partner with and hold the first Olympic Esports Games in Saudi Arabia, saying that the country's National Olympic Committee is in line with the Olympic Charter and that the IOC will work with the committee to "ensure that the event will be held in a sustainable way and international standards are respected in the context of the event," according to a statement attributed to an IOC spokesperson. 

The IOC Esports Committee pointed to Saudi Arabia's recent efforts to encourage sports participation among its population, including substantial growth among women, from girls playing in school football leagues to nearly 30 women's national teams. 

"With regards to LGBTQ+ players — within the context of the Olympic Esports Games and in line with the Olympic Charter, there will be no discrimination against any player on the basis of their gender or sexuality," the IOC spokesperson said. "We will work with our Olympic Esports Games partners to ensure that all athletes/players feel welcome and compete safely in our events."

There are other concerns about Saudi Arabia's massive investments in esports — through acquisitions, the kingdom owns around 40% of the total esports market, according to a recent report by The New York Times, making it difficult for anyone in the industry not to work with or for the country. This has led to questions about whether the Olympic Esports Games would exist without Saudi Arabia's investments.

"If the IOC truly believed in its principals they would have created the esports games without the Saudi partnership, and this news would be much more widely accepted," said esports analyst Breslau. "As it stands, the Olympics is now complicit in esportswashing."

Global politics and the Olympics

Some parts of the esports and gaming communities may again protest and even skip the inaugural Olympics Esports Games held in Saudi Arabia, but boycotting Olympics on moral and political grounds is a tradition that goes back to their modern resumption in the early 20th century, as this timeline from the Associated Press illustrates. Countries defeated in the world wars were excluded from the 1920 and 1948 Olympics, and Cold War tensions led to varying abstentions until the US led 60 countries in boycotting the 1980 Moscow Games over the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, followed by a Soviet boycott of the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. 

Athletes from countries involved in wars condemned by the international community have been allowed to compete in the Games as neutral athletes under no flag, which is how competitors from Russia and Belarus — nations that have invaded and waged war on Ukraine for more than two years — are participating in the 2024 Paris Olympics.

The most prominent and long-lasting absence was that of South Africa, which was banned from attending the 1964 Tokyo Olympics due to its apartheid system of racial discrimination, as the AP described, and the country didn't return to the Games until 1992, when referendums preceded the end of that government-imposed societal system. 

At this early stage, it's unclear how substantial any protests would be against the Olympic Esports Games in Saudi Arabia. Amid the 2024 Esports World Cup held in the country, some competitors attended while waging their own, quieter protests. The esports organization Team Liquid sent its members to compete, and they wore their official rainbow-colored Pride jerseys to show their support for the LGBTQ+ community on stage. Team Liquid co-CEO Steve Arhancet posted a lengthy explanation on X (formerly Twitter) ahead of the tournament of the organization's decision and his own as a gay man to attend and, hopefully, spark conversations to inspire incremental change.

"Progress lies in engagement, not isolation," Arhancet wrote on X. "Progress won't be swift, and setbacks are inevitable, but in the meantime we at Team Liquid believe that the best way to create change is to include others, and show them that progress is possible."