English Premier League Executive Chairman, Richard Scudamore has expressed his concerns that ‘digital sports’ is the biggest threat to traditional Football/Soccer. Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, Scudamore talks about the various obstacles that he believes poses as a threat to the Premier League, one of which is the rise of eSports. Scudamore stated that young people are gravitating towards “all sorts of digital gaming” and “social media generally” which is more likely to take them away from the Premier League.
Scudamore has gone on to express his fascination about how the future seems to favor digital platforms and what that evolution means for young people: “For anyone who’s got young children, you see what they’re doing in their lives and they’re spending a lot of time engaging interactively — not just gaming, but social media, interacting with their friends… I say ‘friends’ — people they know from across the world. Whether they would pass the old definition of friends”. He has made it clear that he would try and cater to this change in order to keep the Premier League relevant: “The interesting bit about the future is whether this game will continue to engage them, and that’s why we have to make sure we’re doing everything we can to make sure it does.”
Whether these concerns are warranted or not remains to be seen as the future approaches. As it stands, traditional sports are still very much the majority even as eSports continue to rise.