Over the last few year bradcasted gaming tournaments and leagues, also known as eSports, has grown remarkably. If you ask the president of the major US sports network ESPN, John Skipper, however, he will tell you that eSports is not a real sport, nor something he wants to put on his network:
"It's not a sport, it's a competition," Skipper relipied when asked about eSports at the Code/Media Series: New York conference last Thursday. "Chess is a competition. Checkers is a competition. Mostly, I'm interested in doing real sports."
The statment stands in contrast to their coverage of this years Dota 2 tournament "The International", which was covered on both ESPN3 (main events) and ESPN2 (preview shows).
In addition there's been talk of ESPN-coverage of Major League Gaming-attatched Call Of Duty: Ghosts tournaments as well as similar coverage for League Of Legends-matches, so either Skipper has missed a memo or something radical has changed with the companys attutude towards eSports over the summer.
Should games be recognised as "real sports"?