Competitive Video Gaming Could Be the Newest Olympic Sport. Here's What It Would Look Like

The space could pass for a TV control room at any major sporting event. A few dozen workers were wearing headsets, looking at a maze of computer screens. But here, footsteps away from the frigid beach in the coastal South Korean city of Gangneung--which is hosting figure skating, hockey and other arena ice events at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang--NBC wasn't covering curling. Instead ESL, a company that organizes competitions in e-sports, or competitive video gaming, was streaming the semi-finals of a tournament hosted by Olympic sponsor Intel on the Olympic Channel. The stakes were particularly high, and not just for the competitors.