[IeSF News] Cooperation with OCA

As everyone knows, International e-Sports Federation is endeavoring to uplift the public confidence of e-sports globally as general sports, and to expand its realm. As part of this project, we have been preparing affiliation to Sport Accord, and we are close to the goal as we are done most of documentations. Since one of the requirements for application is having more than 40 member nations under the federation’s authority, however, we still have one big obstacle to jump over. In order to accomplish this mission, we have dedicated to develop new member nations. Then, it is entering new state as we have met Olympic Council of Asia (OCA).
To explain background information, OCA had selected e-sports as demonstration discipline within the 2nd Asian Indoor Games in 2007, which is pre-event of Asian Games that is such Olympic-wise event among Asian nations. In 2009, at the 3rd Asian Indoor Games held in Vietnam, as e-sports had been raised as official title of the event, e-sports have been drawing attention of OCA. The 4th Asian Indoor & Martial Arts Games, Asian Indoor Games being integrated with formal Asian Martial Arts Games, is being held in Inceon Korea in 2013, and here e-sport is also included as official discipline.
OCA, as hosting these events, has experienced sort of trouble in operation and technical manner within past events due to absence of international governing body for e-sports. Thus, OCA perceived IeSF as the official international governing body for e-sports, and requested support and advice for technical issues. There, we have provisionally made agreement between IeSF and OCA to cooperate in long term manner for e-sports in Asia as well as taking part in 4th Asian Indoor & Martial Arts Games as Technical Delegate for e-sports discipline. In accordance with this situation, many of National Olympic Committees from different Asian countries also increase their interest on e-sports, and spur to establish e-sports associations and federations in each country. Therefore, it commands to find prospect or IeSF to expand its membership in Asia region.
This phenomenon and attention of international sports governing bodies toward e-sports is one good example reflecting future potential of e-sports. It is expected that e-sports may be able to establish solid foothold as formal sports in the near future.