Esports Continue to Drive Toward Olympic Contention

In June of 2023, Singapore hosted a new sort of Olympic event that flew under the radar compared to the might and the majesty of the formal Olympic Games. Hundreds of the best competitors in the world gathered there to show their skills in a series of 10 events, some familiar and many others less so, each vying for a taste of gold.

Yet it wasn’t the usual complement of medals being handed out. Instead, the top three in each event took home gold, silver, and bronze trophies. Why the difference? Because this wasn’t a traditional Olympic Games, it was the inaugural Olympic Esports Week, and it points to an interesting future where virtual and physical competition may coexist. And motorsport was an integral part of the experience. 

According to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the 2023 Olympic Esports Week was “designed to support the development of esports within the Olympic movement and to engage with the competitive gaming community.” Its roots date back nearly a decade, with the IOC beginning early discussions about how to better integrate the popularity of esports. 

Esports are, simply, competitive video games. Since the earliest days of Pong and Tempest, people have been trying to best each other on the virtual playing field. Early competitions in the 1980s made superstars of gamers like Billy Mitchell. It’s only in recent years, though, that competitive gaming has reached a level of popularity on par with more traditional sports. At the 2023 League of Legends World Championship, an astonishing 6.4 million concurrent streamers tuned in to watch. By way of perspective, Super Bowl LVII that year averaged 7 million concurrent streams, at least according to Fox Sports. 

Competitive gamers in major titles like DOTA 2 and Counter-Strike earn millions in prizes and sponsorship deals. They also secure the kind of passionate, global fanbase that professional athletes in other disciplines would covet. Yet despite such global popularity, it wasn’t until the Covid pandemic that the IOC got serious about esports. In 2021, the Olympic Virtual Series featured five virtual, remote events. It was just a start, but it was successful enough to spawn the 2023 Olympic Esports Series.

At the inaugural event in Singapore, ten events were included:

While a few of the titles may look familiar, most of them were relative unknowns. These games, many new and with small followings, seemed out of keeping with the standards of the Olympics and misaligned with what was globally popular in the realm of esports. But there was one game on the list that everybody knew, standing well above the rest when it came to public renown: Gran Turismo. The series, developed by Polyphony Digital and launched in 1997 for the original PlayStation, has spawned countless iterations covering every generation of the console, up to the latest, the PlayStation 5. More importantly, it’s become the world’s most popular racing esports title, and the cornerstone of multiple esports series.

To give credit where it’s truly due, it was the GT Academy that really stoked the fires of Gran Turismo in esports. Launched in partnership with Nissan in 2008, and the brainchild of Nissan Europe’s general manager at the time, Darren Cox, GT Academy spawned multiple world champions and even a recent hit movie.

More significantly, though, it raised the global awareness of simulated motorsports, or sim racing, to the point where now it’s increasingly commonplace for virtual racers to get professional drives in real race cars. They follow in the footsteps of sim racers like Jann Mardenborough, who won the GT Academy in 2011 and went on to a successful professional racing career in the real world.

Another of those sim racers is Kylian Drumont, a 20-year-old competitor from France. Drumont won the Gran Turismo World Series 2022 Showdown Nation’s Cup when he was just 18. At that time, he’d been sim racing for just two years.

“I started sim racing when I was 16, and very quickly, I loved it,” he said. “So I’ve always taken it seriously, especially as I could see I was doing very well.” 

To put that in perspective, that would be like someone showing up at their local go-kart track for the first time, winning a few races, and two years later winning the Formula 1 world championship. Given the massive amount of money involved in racing in the real world, and the limited number of seats available globally, that isn’t possible. But, in esports, it is.

“A dream come true” is how Drumont described winning the championship. “It was my first year at a high level and my best in terms of emotions, motivation, and performance.” Adding the might of the Olympic Games to competition, however, raised the pressure significantly for Drumont. “A simulator bug during qualifying put a lot of pressure on me with all eyes on me,” Drumont said. “Fortunately, I managed to keep my cool to do a good lap, which placed me P2.”

The race was a 42-lap endurance run around Deep Forest Raceway, a 2.6-mile, 15-turn circuit featured prominently since the very first Gran Turismo title. Despite not existing in the real world, it’s become an iconic circuit.

A total of 12 competitors from around the world qualified for the race, with Chilean Angel Inostroza taking pole position. Inostroza started the race on a soft tire, allowing him to escape from the pack and establish a good lead early. However, with most everyone else starting on harder, more durable medium tires, Inostroza had to pit first. Drumont started on medium tires, which meant that later in the race he could run a faster set of soft tires. On lap 35, Drumont made a thrilling pass for the lead, ultimately winning the race and becoming an Olympic Esports Series champion. 

“The strategy, the pace was perfect, and the feeling of victory is unique,” says Drumont. “Add to that the fact that it’s the Olympics, which gives beauty to this medal.” Beauty and prestige, yes, but not quite to the same level as the regular Olympic Games. Speaking to CNN at the 2023 event, Vincent Pereira, then head of esports at the IOC, shot down any chance of these video-game competitions becoming better integrated into the actual Olympics themselves. “They’re two different worlds,” he said. “They have their own codes.”

That sentiment was echoed by Kit McConnell, IOC sports director, who told The Straits Times: “At the moment, we’re not looking at esports themselves being in the Olympic program.” Regardless, esports will continue on their own. The IOC is changing the schedule and the format somewhat, but the competition will return in 2025 as the Olympic Esports Games. This new series will start in Saudi Arabia, with the goal of running every two years. 

“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,” stated IOC President Thomas Bach. This time, the IOC is working with international federations governing various real-world sports to determine which esports are the best choice for virtual competition. Hopefully, this will address some of the criticism from 2023’s selection of gaming titles. 

Will Drumont be there in 2025? “Yes, absolutely!” he said. “It would be an honor to be able to defend my title and repeat the experience.” But he also believes that esports should become better integrated into the Olympics themselves, celebrating the athleticism of race drivers, real and virtual. 

“In esport, it is the discipline most similar to that of real car racing . . . drivers like Esteban Ocon, Max Verstappen, and Romain Grosjean do car simulation themselves,” says Drumont, in arguing for the inclusion of esports in the Olympics. “Yes, it would be incredible!”