E-Sports at Beijing Olympics 2008! Rejoice!

The Olympics are world’s symbolic finals of all finals in sports. And what better a place would it be to have a little bit of e-Sports going on? Yes! Global Gaming League has signed an official deal with the Beijing Olympics organization committee that has made them the official welcome event.

Officials of the GGL, a California start-up, had been working hard to acquire permissions from the organizing committee to use symbols from the Olympics’ logo. Not just that, they also wanted to get an official endorsement from the committee for the e-Sports event they are going to call ‘Digital Games.’ Ted Owen the CEO of the firm says,

“The ultimate elevation of gaming and the culture of gaming to the world stage.”

The Digital Games’ finals will not be held in Beijing, but in Shanghai. The GGL press release mentions that the official website for the event will go live on Feb 25th. The format will be very similar to the World Cyber Games (WCG), where every country will be represented by a national team, who have qualified through a process of qualification tournaments in their respective nations.

An in depth report on Fortune online states that this is a serious business for China, since China recently recognized ‘gaming’ as national sport, and this tournament will be great platform for them to actually solidify that vision. In that report, Ted Owen states,

“We believe the crowds we’ll get will be far larger than for the Olympic games themselves.”

The venues, still to be chosen, are likely to be big soccer stadiums - not unusual for gaming competitions in China and elsewhere in Asia. Video gaming is rapidly becoming one of the world’s most popular spectator sports, with audiences, especially in Asia, numbering many millions both live and on TV. [Link]

While you guys digest this awesome news, let me contact some people and ask them what the status of this tournament in Pakistan is… so stay tuned!