Editor’s
note: Thomas Terraz is a third year LL.B.
candidate at the International and European Law programme at The Hague
University of Applied Sciences with a specialisation in European Law. Currently
he is pursuing an internship at the T.M.C. Asser Institute with a focus on
International and European Sports Law.
1.
Introduction
The
organizational structure of sports in Europe is distinguished by its
pyramid structure which is marked by an open promotion and relegation system. A
truly closed system, without promotion and relegation, is unknown to Europe,
while it is the main structure found in North American professional sports
leagues such as the NFL, NBA and the NHL. Recently, top European football clubs
along with certain members of UEFA have been debating different possibilities
of introducing
a more closed league system to European
football. Some
football clubs have even wielded the threat of
forming an elite closed breakaway league. Piercing through these intimidations
and rumors, the question of whether a closed league system could even survive
the scrutiny of EU competition law remains. It could be argued that an
agreement between clubs to create a completely closed league stifles
competition and would most likely trigger the application of Article 101 and
102 TFEU.[1]
Interestingly, a completely closed league franchise system has already
permeated the European continent. As outlined in my
previous blog, the League of Legends European
Championship (LEC) is a European e-sports competition that has recently
rebranded and restructured this year from an open promotion and relegation
system to a completely closed franchise league to model its sister competition
from North America, the League Championship Series. This case is an enticing
opportunity to test how EU competition law could apply to such a competition
structure.
As
a preliminary note, this blog does not aim to argue whether the LEC is a ‘real’
sport competition and makes the assumption that the LEC could be considered as
a sports competition.[2]
More...
Editor’s
note: Thomas Terraz is a third year LL.B.
candidate at the International and European Law programme at The Hague
University of Applied Sciences with a specialisation in European Law. Currently
he is pursuing an internship at the T.M.C. Asser Institute with a focus on
International and European Sports Law.
1. Introduction
The
surge of e-sports has stimulated a lively discussion on the essential
characteristics of sport and whether e-sports, in general, can be considered a
sport. However, one should not overlook the fact that e-sports encompass a
broad range of video games that fundamentally differ from one another. Thus, as
one commentator recently underlined, “the position of video games and the
e-sport competitions based on them should be analysed on a case-by-case basis.”[1]
In this spirit, this blog aims to provide a concise analysis of one of these
e-sports, League of Legends (LoL), and one of its main competitions, the League
of Legends European Championship (LEC), to assess whether it could be
considered a sport in the sense of EU law. The LEC offers a fascinating
opportunity to examine this issue especially since the previous European League
of Legends Championship Series (EU LCS) was rebranded and restructured this
year into the LEC. More...
Editor’s
Note: Emre Bilginoglu[1]
is an attorney in Istanbul and the co-founder of the Turkish E-Sports Players
Association, a non-profit based in Istanbul that aims to provide assistance to
professional gamers and to work on the relevant laws affecting them.
The world is witnessing the
rise of a new sport that is growing at an incredible speed: E-Sports. We are
only starting to understand its legal implications and challenges.
In
recent years, E-Sports has managed to attract thousands of fans to arenas to
see a group of people play a video game. These people are literally
professional gamers (cyber athletes)[2]
who make money by competing in tournaments. Not all video games have tournaments
in which professional players compete against each other.
The most played
games in E-Sports competitions are League of Legends (LoL),
Defense of the Ancients 2 (DotA 2) and Counter-Strike: Global
Offensive (CS:GO). LoL and DotA are both Multiplayer online
battle arena (MOBA) games, a genre of strategy video games in which the player
controls a single character in one of two teams. The goal of the game is to
destroy the opponent’s main structure. CS:GO is a first-person shooter (FPS)
game, a genre of video games where the player engages combat through a
first-person perspective. The main objective in CS:GO is to eliminate the opposing team
or to terrorize or counter-terrorize, planting bombs or rescuing hostages. Other
games that have (popular) E-Sports competitions include Starcraft II (real time
strategy), Hearthstone (collectible card video game), Call of Duty (FPS) and
FIFA (football).
The
gaming requires cooperation between team players, a high level of concentration,
rapid reactions and some seriously fast clicking. E-Sports is a groovy term to
describe organized competitive computer gaming. The E-Sports industry is
exponentially growing, amounting to values expressed in billions of dollars. According
to Newzoo,
a website dedicated to the collection of E-Sports data, there are some 250
million occasional viewers of E-Sports with Asia-Pacific accounting for half of
the total amount. The growth of the industry is indubitably supported by online
streaming media platforms. This article aims to explain what E-Sports is and to give the readers
an insight on the key legal questions raised by it. More...