Some Sports Fans Upset ESPN Is Airing Video Game Tournaments

This weekend, ESPN2 aired a preview for the grand finals of
Dota 2’s The International, the 10 million-dollar tournament for the very popular video game. The move is kind of a big deal—arguably, it grants competitive gaming more mainstream legitimacy. But not everyone was happy to see Dota 2 on ESPN.

You can watch the segment here thanks to
Mitchell Chea—Gabe Newell appears at about the 20 minute mark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UuqBo1Rj1U

Naturally, some folks were hyped about the whole thing:

But most folks seemed confused, irritated, if not downright angry about ESPN2 airing a video game:

Here’s a preview of some of the negative tweets you’ll find if you search ‘ESPN2’ on Twitter. Click on ‘expand’ to see the image in full:

(
Image via Redditor nicnarcotic)

The intense response might seem silly, but it kind of makes sense. The average sports fan might not necessarily know or care about
Dota, and its broadcast on ESPN2 was a surprise even to gamers. Plus, gamers themselves have disputes about categorizing gaming as a sport. EDIT: some folks might’ve just been upset that their normally expected programming was interrupted without much warning, as was the case with one Tweet we originally pictured in this article. That’s reasonable. None of this excuses people being mean about how Dota 2 players look, of course!

But to put this even further into perspective, here is the response that sports fans had to ESPN broadcasting
soccer during the world cup, as posted by Redditor Vik1ng:

The response to
Dota doesn’t seem so bad now, huh? Heh.

(
Via Reddit)