The Government wants to make France a great nation of e-Sport by 2025. And even plans to organize an electronic sport event during the 2024 Olympic Games. A great ambition to celebrate this form of video game.
Video games are now an integral part of culture and the Government is pursuing its desire to make France a major player in the sector. In particular, it intends to take advantage of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games to try to host the Olympic Esports Weekend 2024 with the aim of strengthening the bridges between traditional sport and electronic sport (e-Sport, Esport or eSport, depending on the versions). This is why Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, Minister of Sports and the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Jean-Noël Barrot, Minister Delegate for the Digital Transition and Telecommunications, and Rima Abdul Malak, Minister of Culture, met at the house of e-Sport this Monday, January 16, 2023 with around thirty players in the e-Sport sector, including sports teams, organizers, media, communities, France Esports, the union of software publishers and leisure activities and the Paris 2024 Games Organizing Committee. They agreed on five major objectives to be achieved by 2025:
- Structuring the e-Sport ecosystem,
- Better support associations and amateur practice in the territories,
- Remove the obstacles to the development of the practice,
- Facilitate the hosting of major international e-Spot events,
- And host Olympic Esports Week in France at the end of 2024, just after the Olympics.
To meet these objectives, everyone has developed a multi-step action plan.
e-Sport: making France attractive in the video game sector
The first stage of the action plan consists of a prefiguration mission with the aim of creating a national structure aimed at piloting and implementing the national e-Sport strategy, particularly in terms of the development of the practice, its supervision, the training of actors, the attractiveness of the sector and its economic development, with “all the necessary legitimacy and support with public and private players in the ecosystem.” This mission must in particular determine the legal form that this structure could take and its financing methods by the summer of 2023.
The second point raised is “promote the supervision and development of the practice in the territories in a logic that is responsible, collegial and readable at the same time.” This will involve the creation of a map of e-Sport players who promote associations or facilitate interactions and synergies between players, the establishment of regional e-Sport branches in two to four regions pilots, and the “responsible promotion” the virtues of discipline as well as its risks, such as addiction, physical inactivity, isolation or online violence.
The Government also wants to strengthen France’s dynamism in the sector, through competitions, its companies, its video games and its teams, and contribute to its international attractiveness thanks to a “Talent Passport” issued to athletes from high level. Finally, the final step: hosting Olympic Esports Week in 2024 – the first edition will be held in Singapore from June 22 to 25, 2023 – by launching a bid committee from Monday January 16. It will be piloted by the French National Olympic and Sports Committee (CNOSF), the Interministerial Delegation for Major Sporting Events, Paris&Co – e-Sport and the Paris 2024 Organizing Committee, and will be responsible for developing and presenting a project to public actors in the spring of 2023. Until then, the IOC’s specifications and the scope of the event will continue to be refined.