With coronavirus showing no signs to subside, return of LAN tournaments in eSports look distant

This has been a difficult year. The ongoing pandemic has forced all of us to come to grips with the unpredictable nature of the world as well as reconsider our lifestyles. The concept of wearing masks and social distancing even when meeting close friends is something one would never have considered as a possibility before. In the last few days, LA Comic Con has announced that they plan to continue with the in-person event in December 2020. The LA Comic Con is an annual, multi-genre convention held in Los Angeles with its viewers being interested in genres ranging from comic, horror, sci-fi, anime, gaming, and pop culture. The decision has left many unhappy, posts with images with quotes such as “coronavirus likes this” have become a common response from fans. The reactions show that many people feel no amount of ‘safety measures’ that the organisers promise to enforce is enough. The event is being looked at as a hotbed of new infections. In view of the recent announcement and its poor reception being in the minds of most eSports organisers, the question that comes to mind is, how soon can we expect to see the resurgence of the massive LAN (Local Area Network) events that made people take eSports seriously. [caption id=“attachment_8866261” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] The return of LAN or in-person tournaments appera a far cry in eSports. Image courtesy: Image: Abhijit Dey/tech2[/caption] In order to understand the viability of in-person or LAN events for eSports, it is pertinent to look at how conventional sports have resumed under the pandemic. In the recent weeks, many reports have come out about football players across multiple leagues testing positive for COVID-19. This has happened even though the games are being held in stadiums without spectators. Even the ongoing Indian Premier League and the preceding Test series in England were played in a bio-secure bubble. This year, due to the pandemic, several high-profile eSports tournaments have been forced to cancel, postpone or convert to an online format. The biggest of these affected events would be Dota 2’s The International 10 (TI10) and Fortnite World Cup. The total prize pool offered by these events in 2019 exceeded $30 million each. The 2019 edition, known as TI9, had a prize pool of $34.33 million; the event was crowd-funded. As and when TI10 does finally occur, it will have the single largest prize pool of any eSports event to date. It has already generated over $39 million and there are still nearly 10 days left for this figure to increase. Some of the other big events that have been affected include Gamescon 2020, Tokyo Game Show, Ubisoft Forward, ESL One Los Angeles, ESL One Birmingham, Epicentre Major 2020, China’s League of Legends Pro League (LPL), OGA Dota Pit Minor 2020, PUBG 2020 Global Series, Arena of Valor World Cup 2020, NBA 2K League, Capcom Pro Tour 2020, Bandai Namco World Tour Events, Evo 2020, Summer Game Fest, East Coast Throwdown and Tekken World Tour 2020. Given that the pandemic is showing no signs of going away anytime soon as well as the fact that most sporting events that have not followed a strict bio-bubble are experiencing a resurgence in cases, it may be premature to hold in-person events anytime soon. At the earliest, there should be a vaccine that is easily accessible as well as affordable before we hold an event that requires the fans to attend in person.