13 February, 2023

Olympic Esports Week to be hosted 22-25 June 2023 in Singapore

eSports, E-Sports, electronic sports – no matter how you slice it or type it, the term refers to competitive video gaming. There has been some (as yet unresolved) definitional tension on what actually constitutes the ‘sport’ element – detractors point out that most of the ‘athletes’ spend the majority of their time sitting motionlessly in front of a computer. However, support has been sufficient for the biggest sporting event in the world – the Olympics – to begin to acknowledge that there may be space for medalled virtual sports.

This year will see an exciting return to in-person gaming events. After two years sequestered under COVID-19 no-fly rules honing their skills online, competitive eSport participants – as well as the companies driving gaming – will face no shortage of choice regarding where they would like to pick up their next medal. 2023 will be particularly exciting as an increasing number of countries – such as India in December – start to re-classify eSports on par with soccer and cricket. (Although we can’t be sure there weren’t strong words exchanged in India when that equation happened.[1])

At Access Partnership and the Fair Tech Institute, we are excited to observe major moves by traditional sporting competitions to explore the development of competitive virtual sports and gaming in 2023. If you’re interested in professional country-medalled gaming, you may want to look into these events:

Major Country-Medalled E-game Sporting Events for 2023
please email us to let us know if we’ve missed anything and/or
if you’d like your event included in the list below.

5-17 May: 32nd Southeast Asian Games in Cambodia	This will feature a number of eSports disciplines being presented: (1) Crossfire (PC), published by Z8Games, OMG, ST Interactive, Tencent, and VTC Game; (2) League of Legends: Wild Rift (mobile), published by Riot Games; (3) Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (mobile), published by Moonton Games; (4) PUBG Mobile (mobile), published by Tencent; (5) Valorant (PC), published by Riot Games; (6) Attack Online 2 (PC).[2]
22-25 Jun: Olympic Esports Week in Singapore	The Olympics announced in mid-Nov 2022 that they would host the first Olympic Esports Week between 22-25 June 2023 in Singapore.[3]
23 Sep – 8 Oct: 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou China	The final list of eSports disciplines has yet to be announced, but among those expected to be are: (1) League of Legends, published by Riot Games; (2) Arena of Valor, published by Garena, Tencent Games, and Level Infinite; (3) Peace Elite aka PUBG Mobile, published by Tencent; and (4) FIFA Online 4, published y Garena, Nexon, Tencent, and Tencent Games.[4]

Source: Access Partnership, 2023

If you have an eSports or gaming event that you’d like to add to this list, or if you would like to commission a thought leadership and public engagement piece exploring issues in the gaming community, please contact May-Ann at mayann.lim@accesspartnership.com.