If we look at the sports tournament right now there is a rather grim look on it, as major sports event are currently being postponed such as English Primer League, Serie A, other football league on every tier, F1 and other racing sports, ATP tour 2020, and most of other sports has also been announced to be postponed or even cancelled such as Netherland’s Eredivisie league which has announced the 2019/2020 to be null with details of Europe competition contention based on discussion with UEFA.
Covid-19 also impacted the esports scene with CS GO primer tournament Intel Extreme Masters Katowice 2020 played in empty stadium which also become the last major esports event to be held before the massive outbreak and social distancing is implied, with most of major esports event such as ESL One Los Angeles Major being cancelled followed by CS GO ESL One Rio Major 2020, and ultimately Valve announced their crown jewel The International which generated total prize pool of 34 million USD last year will also be postponed and hold in 2021. Although other minor events have been changed into an online event, a move which ultimately the conventional sport organizer follow.
With all the conventional sport events have been cancelled or postponed, the sport organization and the player has turned their head into esports as way of temporarily coping with the absence of sports, the Football Association (FA) of EPL held their online FIFA invitational, where players will represent their club in online match against each other with Wolverhampton Wanderers striker Diogo Jota comes out as the first winner beating Liverpool’s own Alexander Arnold at the final, meanwhile other sportsman such as F1 driver Max Verstappen also spend his time practicing by playing the F1 video game.
Sports and esports have undoubtedly become one of the important part in our daily life as it becomes one of things that people often being passionate about, it is scientifically proven that a diehard sports fan is directly impacted with their team/player performance, as it could affect the release of oxytocin, serotonin, and directly impact the heart beat rate. Sports, no matter how much different they may be, is a very good communal thing, it gives us the sense of belonging supporting the same club, giving us the sense of proud and excitement, something to cheer about and to be passionate about to take our minds of things.
In the time as dire as such, the existence of sports could help us rally and believe that we could survive the dire times, as the spirits and joy brought by sports could ultimately become our fuel to get out of the situation, but as the situation stands the unavailability of our conventional sports, the presence of esports as it almost capable replacements could very much help reduce the emptiness and loneliness, hopefully the events could be start over as soon as possible, and pandemic will be over soon so we can get back to normal, so we can go to nearest pub/coffee shop watch your favourite team/sports cheer, cry and laugh together and forget Covid-19 even happened and focus to the future.