Esports Olympic Games scheduled for 2025 likely to be postponed

There is every reason to believe that the Esports Olympic Games – which IOC President Thomas Bach spoke about six months ago as a new page in the history of world sports – most likely will not take place this year

As reported by the reputable Sport Business portal, the Esports Olympic Games scheduled to be held in Saudi Arabia will be postponed to 2026 or even 2027. The International Olympic Committee has not officially announced any new date, but insiders assert that preparations are too slow: game developers are not pleased that they still do not know the details of the event, such as its venue and format.

The International Olympic Committee signed a 12‑year agreement with the Saudi Olympic and Paralympic Committee six months ago to allow the country to ‘regularly’ host Esports Olympic Games for the duration of the partnership. The fact that Saudi Arabia received such a right did not come as a surprise, given that the country has positioned itself in recent years as the dominant force in the esports industry, and Riyadh hosted the World Esports Championship last year.

Saudi Arabia was supposed to host the first Games probably in November, but many in the esports industry immediately began calling the timing of such competitions very tight. A little later, there emerged the general dissatisfaction of numerous computer game developers about the slow pace of preparations and the lack of necessary information. The esports calendar is scheduled for years to come, and, according to Sport Business, many were unable or unwilling to adjust their plans to IOC.

In 2024, Thomas Bach noted that 3 billion people play computer games worldwide. It is estimated that more than 500 million of them are interested in esports, which includes virtual sports and sports simulations. "Moreover, and this is more important for us, most of them are under the age of 34," Mr. Bach added, but the Esports Olympic Games organisers seem to have been unable to cope with the moral problem recently: IOC refuses competitive shooters (Counter‑Strike 2, Call of Duty or Valorant), since these games are violent, though they are perhaps the most popular in the world. A year ago, Mr. Bach spoke about the desire to adapt computer games to Olympic values — so that players shoot at targets, not at people, but if Western journalists' assumptions about the imminent postponement of the Esports Olympic Games are confirmed, then critical arrows will surely fly at the current IOC leadership and the one that will be elected at a session in March.

This is especially topical in the situation when the Games of the Future were held in Russia in 2024, and computer games were successfully combined with real sports there. It was also announced then that the second Games of the Future, without any participation of IOC, are going to be held in 2025 in the United Arab Emirates.