The South Korean League of Legends team of e-sports organization KT Rolster has completed their part of the Olympic relay race with the torch. The veteran League of Legends players were the only e-athletes to compete in the relay.
The five players of KT Rolster, Smeb, Score, Pawn, Deft, and Mata, were each allowed to play a small part of a street in Seoul. walk with the torch. It is the first time that an e-sports team is taking part in the traditional long torchlight march in the run-up to the Olympics. The 2018 Winter Olympics will be held in Pyeongchang, South Korea, from February 9 to 25.
E-sports are not yet part of this upcoming edition of the Winter Olympics, but the fact that these e-athletes from KT Rolster were allowed to participate in the relay race along with the other athletes indicates that the IOC is slowly starting to take e-sports more seriously to take. The Intel Extreme Masters, a major annual esports event, will hold a Starcraft 2 tournament in Pyeongchang in the run-up to the Olympics. Intel will sponsor the IOC until 2024.
In August, it emerged that the IOC is considering introducing e-sports as part of the 2024 Paris Olympics. Thomas Bach, the president of the IOC, later said that only non-violent games are being considered for becoming e-sports. included in the programme.
E-sports are very popular in Asia. E-sports were already part of the program during the Asian Indoor Games in 2017: there were competitions in the games Hearthstone, StarCraft 2, King of Fighters and Dota 2. E-sports will also be part of the Asian variant in 2018 and 2022 of the Olympic Games, the Asian Games.