Esports in Jordan and the Olympic Movement

you hi everybody my name is Nasim Ezeli I am the secretary-general of the Jordan Olympic Committee I am also heading the eSports the Jordan eSports Federation about two years ago in 2017 we as an Olympic Committee had a long discussion about something called the indoor Asian Games and in the indoor Asian Games which is organized by the Olympic Council of Asia so it's under the Olympic movement they said they wanted to introduce a dota 2 tournament within the event and they asked the Asian countries if they had any teams to compete so we decided we wanted to build our own team and and do a test during

that event and we were lucky to be the only Arab country competing with an a team of an Hamid canactually here was one of the people who we put up in our first Jordan eSports Committee the Jordan eSports committee and this is important because it's important to mention what we do what we do is we are the the umbrella organization in Jordan for eSports competitions after a couple of events had a couple some issues in the past and Jordan the Ministry of Interior decided it wanted a body to deal with directly when an event once that is to happen in Jordan so as to be able to get all the legal work through that committee is the Jordan eSports committee one of the first things we did was and connect we might have been part of that experience was our dota 2 team

that we prepared right here in the King Hussein Business Park with the help of grow and with the help of about under the patronage of his royal highness prince omar bin faisal and this was the first-ever official Jordanian team that went out for a championship in the past this is actually from Turkmenistan where the competition took place and why I'm showing you this this is what we were able to do within about two months time of work the one issues it's some of the issues that we faced we're monetization how to make money on to this okay not just for us but more importantly for the athletes themselves and for the teams a couple of issues that we have in Jordans we don't have a lot of official funded teams and I'm looking at you guys and I'm thinking always the issue is funding and

monetization so maybe Zawiya has solutions and kuwait this the solutions in Jordan still are murky at best events connect we can tell you and others who are doing events usually the event entry is much less than what the event investment is so up till now monetization is an issue and this is part of what our committee is here to work on within the next couple of years we need we are building a plan because we need one to see how this could create revenue for athletes we can we can mention athletes names who have made it made it now whether it's in dot miracle of course yep sir a mean trick a man who can accurate who have made it out and ended well ASA Marat in csgo so we have athletes we have Jordanian athletes who rank in the

top echelon let's say of these sports and they make money they make good money but they don't make it in Georgia okay that's one side of the discussion we have now as a Jew as the Jordan Olympic Committee this also has to be a sport and this leads to the next part of that discussion that we've been having not only locally but we've been having this discussion regionally we've been having this discussion internationally with the International Olympic Committee and that is eSports a sport are they as you said athletes and one of the main parts of the International definition for sports by the Olympic movement and by the IOC is that there is physical exertion so they do compete that's part of sports there is skill that's part of sports and the argument we've been making at an

international level that eSports is a sport because there's a lot of mental and physical exertion and that we do require of our athletes to have a lot of physical training so that they are capable of competing at the top level at the top level to get that last 3-4 percent you need to be an up and running not just drinking Red Bull and Mountain Dew the whole time and you had that's good for the first couple of hours and then you need to be physically fit to be able to sit for 10 and 15 hours of competition and in how it's being worked at the international level they need to find the healthiest way to make this happen for it to become considered a sport and they need to regulate and today as most of you with no regulation is only done per game practically and

that's an issue in itself for the Olympic movement - I love - welcome shui about the Olympic movement why does it matter for the International Olympic Committee to look at eSports as a sport and recognize it as such mainly it's because many countries don't care much about the financial revenue from the games but care much more for the competitions and the value of competition that would give back to the country example medals I'll send you to sports imma double wash gets a gold medal at the Olympics in 2016 16 year 60,000 new taekwondo suits are sold or in in in in jordan about 20 new taekwondo centers open in jordan what this has translated to is an increase in the base of the

game an increase in monetization because the center's are now very extremely profitable centers the fact that there is demand enough to fill 20 new centers in jordan in itself is a a profit model for for those athletes or for those for those center owners and coaches but one of the toughest arguments and at this point i'm a member in the marketing commission of the International Olympic Committee and this is where the biggest discussion about this is happening the discussion of whether we should think about including eSports within our program or not including eSports in our program and one of the main arguments we've been making is that the one of the best positives about eSports is that it has it does not differentiate between male and female it does not differentiate between people

with disabilities and people who are fully able because most disability most disabled athletes in eSports will be competing equally with all other athletes and it is one of the cheapest sports to compete in internationally especially if you don't need to leave your couch and within that argument the other argument that we've been having is that we as a smaller country as Jordan have as many top athletes as some of the much bigger countries in the world so this also gives an even playing field for smaller countries because they do not need to die invest and most of the money comes from the developers themselves so there's a need there is a demand by the developers to fund this and fund this even within the Olympic movement and within the IOC and hopefully in the future in the Olympics how much time do I have so that

I can lead it and ten minutes okay I'll use five and then we'll do five minutes of questions if we have questions so with that being said one of the biggest issues that the International Olympic Committee has is the game content and I think this is controllables I'm a quantum techie as you were saying nabil as you were saying to be it could be other games like fifa that could be used within the Olympic movement itself that we give attention to other games that are not within the movement but just recognizing and eSports a eSports is a sport and then recognizing you guys as a fleet's is in itself a major step forward for it for it to be recognized but again this always leads back to

monetization oh Zawiya would have the same issue that the Jordan Olympic Committee has that can actually would have that fate would have all of them are looking at the end of how can we monetize this and you were giving a couple of examples that were included in technology and all of that but that's still it's it's still a limited market and most of the people who are working in the Middle East market have found out that I know you were asking a question about reach in marketing and getting sponsorship what do they get in return and it's very tough today to put an actual value on the athletes regardless of how good the athlete is holla in the case of America at that time with Team Liquid you go out to the dota 2 world championship and you go and compete and you get first place and you get a pot of two point five million dollars lekawa had the government between la jolla hollien our

Holford i'm gonna get half a million dollars as tax and your math team manager might get another half a million there's monetization but this is a very very very very very very exceptional case with less than point zero zero zero one percent of athletes and this is what most teams internationally are trying to bank on and this is with developer money but this we are still a very very far away from that when we come and say what do we want to do with the majority of our athletes and this is this is one of the things we are trying to work it on as a committee in in the jordan esports committee how to organize the sector how to give you somewhere to be able to go to and eventually hook you up with regional companies that are working on developing athletes this is one of the toughest areas to work on which is athlete development what is the right

way to develop an athlete how to manage him and lead him to a much more profitable or or sustainable career within esports while at the same time getting the support of government for all regulations related to that i think i want to stop there and take any questions that you have if you have any go ahead yeah yes yes no I'll tell you what the argument

that's being made is in that specific case doesn't really matter at the end of the day women can be given the equal opportunity to compete within that in equestrian you could see males and females compete equally they're okay in some forms of Team Tennis they they compete equally when they're mixed teams within eSports they'd be given that opportunity you cannot block a person because of gender because anyways you do not actually know the gender you there are there is a there is a million ways for you not to know the gender of the athlete that's playing against you the thing is developing a female athlete to be able to compete against the male athlete in itself I don't think is an issue and we haven't seen that as an issue today now interest in the game is it predominantly a male interest versus female interest

that's not the argument that we have here but does that make sense to yeah yeah yeah okay I'll answer you from the from the point of view that I was talking the argument we are making to the IOC on behalf of eSports is that it is very much possible for a male to compete with the female equally within eSports not I'm not saying or making a statement that men and women will be able to do so from a competitive point of view so that is to be no that would the proof for

that will be made with time game-by-game yeah yeah yeah we are making the same argument so the Jordan Olympic Committee is making the same argument you're making we are arguing for most mental sports again because of the same reason where you can compete in them equally amongst different groups the one argument that's coming back from academia in the Olympic movement is is it a sport and that applies to chess as it applies to eSports because today within the indoor Asian Games we did have eSports and we

did have chess as competitions there but at the Olympic at the Olympic Games neither our Olympic sports okay last question from you no no I'll just mix it up no no go ahead go ahead go ahead yeah yeah [Music] that's that's a double-edged sword if you use such a study saying that they're being they're harming their body by playing the game okay the argument of many people in the Olympic movement would say that it is harmful because a the the physical effects that it that it's having on them would not be because of physical exertion but rather because

of lack of physical movement so you don't want to use it if that was an actual study that proves what your we were talking about it could be a double-edged sword the one thing we're trying to make an argument with this is for an athlete to compete at a high level he needs to do some form of sports and strength and conditioning for him to be able to do that going yep we we made a team at the time it was a temporary team yeah yeah yes yeah yeah sure I'll tell you something about

legal legends from what I've learned within the Middle East so the Saudis have a big very big investment in the league of legends other Gulf countries do have that investment I saw a bigger market for dota 2 and for dr. - probably because of Barkawi and in that it's the same thing with ahmed ablution tae kwon do you see shift from many other from many other individual sports to taekwondo because people know they could get to the Olympics there and they can compete and we have the coaches and we have all that in there so as a league of Legends player or any other game at this point the one thing we've been trying to work on but we've been slow in working on and I'm saying that in front of connecting because I'm part of the slowness is that we want to do we want to be able to create a community that you can lean on as an athlete but we've been facing many

challenges one of the main challenges we've been facing is how to make the Federation itself for the committee itself a self-sustainable Federation so that we make an argument in front even of our Board of the Olympic Committee board that this sport actually will bring in money for Jordan rather than we need to spend money on it so we've been trying to iron that out to be able to create that platform the one thing that we've been able to very much advanced in is we've been and this is a funny part we've been able to discuss with the government to allow us to allow events to happen in Jordan Saban last year one of the events that happened in Jordan created an issue with government where we had to where where government stopped accepting applications to do eSports events which eventually am I at time

yeah so so it's a step-by-step process but soon enough I hope to have an answer to that question that you've asked thank you [Applause] you