So Why Should eSports be in the Olympics?

First of all, there are some common misconceptions in eSports that had rejected them to be in the Olympic sports in the past. For instance, they are very violent, and they may be seen as a waste of time and commitment. In the eye of the Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, violence exists in sports, but sports are a civilized expression of it. If eSports are about killing people, this cannot be brought into line with the Olympic values.

Some games involve blood and the killings of other players:

"We cannot have in the Olympic programme a game which is promoting violence or discrimination,"  Bach told the Associated Press during the recent Asian Games"

However, this assumption where eSports correlate to violence shows how little one knows about eSports because there are so many popular eSport games that aren't killing-based. For instance, Rocket League and FIFA are sport-based competitive games that require teamwork to shoot a ball into the goals to get as many points as possible to win the game. There are hotly contested card games like Hearthstone, and there are perennials like Street Fighter based upon martial arts already featured in the Olympic Games.

Moreover, Bach gave this statement in response to a deadly shooting incident that happened at an eSport tournament in a Florida Shopping mall in August 2018. Asian Games organizers expressed sympathy for victims of the shooting.

    They faulted US gun laws, not esports.

“But I think this is a bigger issue of gun control and access to guns,”

said Kenneth Fok, president of the Asian Electronic Sports Federation, following the shooting.

Additionally, the logic that sports are the civilized expression of violence is not reasonable when they cause so many injuries and even casualties.

    The overall injury rate in NCAA football is 8.1 injuries per 1,000 athlete exposures (games and practices combined). There were more than 41,000 injuries and 25 million athlete exposures from 2004 to 2009.

These injuries include concussions (that make up to 7.4% of all injuries in college soccer players), catastrophic spinal cord injuries, heart issues due to extensive physical exertion, where they all lead to fatalities as well.
When one of the most popular Olympic games in the world causes so many injuries, it is illogical that the main reason refraining eSports from entering the Olympics is because they are too violent.

Yet, if the definition of violence is the unjust action of purposely hurting someone, both soccer and eSports are violent to an extent. There are times where soccer players "cheat" by harming others in order to gain victories, and some eSport games, especially, first-person shooting games, promote the violence in blood and killings. In this case, it is possible to state that some eSports may never be qualified by the Olympics, but that should not deny the opportunity of other games entering the Olympics.