by Constantine Surkont,Secretary General of Russia e-Sports Federation
In the current edition of the IeSF Statutes there exists the term of Confederations. “Confederation: A group of Associations recognized by IeSF but belong to the same continent or incorporated in the same geographic region”. Generally confederations, that act within the frames of international sport federations, occur in many sports. The most luminous instance is football. The FIFA have six confederations, formed according to continental criteria. The confederations together cover all FIFA members. Similar situation has formed in other sports like volleyball, shooting sport, roller skating, curling and many others. In some sports just a part of national federations are united in confederations and rest of them do not belong to any (e.g. sambo). Dividing countries into confederations basically pursues two aims.
First,confederations can conduct primary stage of a World competition (exactly what is happening at our World Championship in A.V.A). Secondly, aggregating national federations gives possibility to make territorial championships and gain support at the regional level. The e-Sport is one of the most mass and affordable sports. The only reason why the IeSF have only around 40 members is its youth, juvenilty. 20-30 years old guys do not have much experience in creating national federations, in achieving governmental and commercial supports, communicating with officials. In this aspect joining the SportAccord is exceedingly important step. As soon as it happens (I hope quite soon), as the e-Sports becomes World-recognized, organizing a national e-Sports federation will turn much easier and there will appear more people willing to create such national organizations. Thus serious increasing of IeSF member-nations number is a prospect of the nearest two years, I guess. Then we’ll not be able to dispense with federations banding regionally.
There’s the third reason, besides the two I described above, for confederations in our sport. It is rather specific for the e-Sport itself. Of course we have the IeSF standardization and title committees. But anyway we will not be able to avoid the fact that different videogames competitions are popular in different regions. I’m sure many national federations do not always agree with the choice of titles that the IeSF make each year. The only game that doesn’t cause objections is StarCraft 2 (in 2010 WarCraft 3).
Concerning such titles as FIFA Online 2 or A.V.A we could argue a lot (as well as about absence of some other games). The more NFs join IeSF the more possibility of such controversies and the bigger their seriousness.
Meanwhile we know that particular games get good promotion in compact territories. It doesn’t depend on IeSF decisions (at least so far), but on commercial success of franchisors and games localizers (and maybe on mentality of local population). For example, in Russia and some other former USSR countries such games as Point Blank, World of tanks and IL-2 Sturmovik are much more popular than in many other countries. To judge about popularity of single games in different regions it is possible with annual IeSF title voting statistics. Neighbors often choose similar set of titles. We’re unlikely to elaborate the universal unified set of game titles which fits all parts of the World.
Confederations work can overcome this arguing about titles. Each confederation can hold competitions in videogames appropriate for its region. And other federations don’t have to seek small and rare communities of the games (or train newbies in a short time) realizing that the selected players will never rise over round of sixteen.
Definite conditions shall be applied to a confederation formation. This may be about necessary number of countries that form a confederation or (and) total number of people who live in these countries. Decision upon a confederation and its regulating documents is made by a group of national federations with indispensable approval of the IeSF Board. Head of confederation may also be elected by the majority of confederation members and approved by the Board. At the same time a confederation can have its representative in the Board. Whatever we decide on the issue, national federations will jointly carry out international competitions in games that are regionally popular. Thus they will group together formally or unceremoniously. It will be better that such alliances are created and act within the frames of IeSF statutes.
Which, on the one hand, give space for maneuver in internal confederation affairs but, on the other hand, fix definite restrictions and rules for their operation and compliance.
