Hannah Collins speaks to Esports Wales CEO John Jackson about what the company’s Welsh Masters tournament involves, where it’ll lead for Wales’ top esports players, and his view on the future of esports in Wales and the UK. 

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the first known video gaming competition. It was held at Stanford University in the States where competitors – photographed by now-Vogue favourite Annie Liebowitz – duked it out on Spacewar!, a game produced a decade earlier still in 1962. The prize? A year’s subscription to Rolling Stone magazine.

Today, esports, as it’s come to be known, is a billion-pound industry with millions in both viewership and prize pots up for grabs, having been re-popularised in the 2010s across Asia, Europe and the Americas thanks to online streaming platforms like Twitch. Subsequently, esports are being increasingly accepted as separate but equal to traditional sports, with an esports Commonwealth Championship being held alongside the regular event in Birmingham this year. And Wales could be among the very first teams to compete.

Starting at the end of March, Esports Wales, headed up by CEO and founder John Jackson, is running its third Welsh Masters tournament, the aim of which is to select a national team for the Commonwealth Championship and other major leagues taking place around the world in 2022.

“The Welsh Masters is our tournament to select the best players in Wales for various games,” John explains. Those games are Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), Rocket League, eFootball, Tekken 7 and Dota 2, some of the most popular competitive titles around. “[The tournament] is normally at this time of year because it allows us to select players now that will go into a team ready for the international stuff that is coming up, which are the Commonwealth Games and esports Championships. We have the regionals before that and if we’re successful in those, we’ll go on to play Northern Ireland, Scotland, England, as well as a few other regions. We’ll be looking to make a mixed or an open team for anyone to join, and a women’s team.

“On top of that, we’ve also got the European Championships, for which we’ll be looking to send a team to Baku on Thurs 26-Sun 29 May, and then Romania for Counter Strike from Fri 1-Sun 10 July. Then Montenegro for eFootball, though the date for that hasn’t been confirmed yet, and Albania on Tue 20-Sun 25 Sept for our Dota 2 team. Following on from that we’ll be looking at sending the team to Bali for the World Championships in November. 

“So, the Welsh Masters is just the start of it. If someone wants to play for Wales, this is the way to go about it if they want to show what they can do on a world stage. They’re quite competitive [tournaments] and we’re very much underdogs. This is the first year we’ve competed in some of them as Wales; it’s good to get the national team out there and hopefully replicate some of the passion we get for sports like rugby.”

Similarly to the Commonwealth Games, the four nations will go head to head separately for the esports iteration rather than under the Team GB banner. A theoretical esports Olympics would also mimic the traditional games, selecting the best players from across the UK for a British team.

John is flatly sceptical of esports ever being mixed in with its more physical forebears for the pinnacle of sporting achievement though, giving me a resounding “no” when asked. Though he acknowledges their similarities – both requiring training, specialist skill and being stadium-worthy spectacles – the key delineation, he believes, is the physical pitch, which even virtual reality esports can’t properly make up for.

There’s also the problem of the video games themselves being the intellectual property of corporations and therefore, squabbles between said corporations and the Olympic Committee, for instance, about which game patch to use could easily arise. However, progress on this front has already been made: south-east Asia, the epicentre of modern esports, has made the most strident steps towards legitimising the ‘sport’ of competitive gaming by hosting mixed traditional and esports tournaments since 2007. The upcoming Commonwealth Championship, meanwhile, is reportedly intended to be a trial run for the potential inclusion of esports into the main Games as early as 2026.

Whatever the future of esports versus traditional sports is, these possibilities certainly mean the iron is hot for the Welsh and British teams to strike. John, who is new to running “underdogs” Team Wales, is focused on taking the big leagues in his stride. “Wales is a small country, so it’s always going to be difficult going up against larger ones where they’ve got a bigger player pool to pick from.

“It’s going to be exciting from my point of view, and from a player’s point of view, it’s going to be quite chilled because this is the first time they’re doing it at this level so there’s not a massive expectation for them to perform at the highest level. There are going to be a lot of things we’ll have to learn from and develop to see how we can do it better next time.”

John founded Esports Wales in 2018 with a handful of volunteers to “see Wales compete on a national level, and to develop the [esports] scene within Wales to make sure there’s a community where people can go and learn about the industry, network and find out about events.” Since then, the community aspect of the business has grown to almost 2,000 Discord members, around 5,000 Twitter followers, 10-15 physical meet-ups, as well as working with Welsh Government to set up an apprenticeship scheme and collaborations with the Football Association of Wales. 

One of John’s ongoing goals is not just to make Wales a globally recognised esports country, but to develop the international side at home – replicating the weekly tournament formula of the Six Nations, for instance, by staging friendlies against Esports Scotland and Esports Ireland.

“I think what’s great about esports is that we can pick what’s good about traditional sport and leave out what doesn’t work. One of the things that esports does really well is that because it’s online, you’re able to communicate with people or play across Europe quite easily. Some of the things that esports doesn’t do very well, however, is that localised element: having those localised communities and support from people just because of where you’re from. 

“What we’re doing [to improve that] is giving people that support in our country so that some of them might be coming in as more of a casual viewer. But then they’re also going to get engaged and go, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t mind learning to play that.’ You see it with rugby, tennis and football – when Wimbledon or the Six Nations is on, they’ll see a trend in people wanting to play tennis or wanting to play rugby. From that, you can build those grassroots.

“And what we’re able to do as Esports Wales and British Esports is kind of go: right, how do we want to see the scene? How do we want to give people the opportunities to develop? […] What we’re doing is to see what’s in Wales and how we can develop that Welsh talent as it comes through.”

Inclusivity and diversity are also central to Esports Wales’ mission statement: 500 registered female players by 2024; 250 with disabilities and 4% non-white (in line with the population percentage of Wales). “One of the benefits of esports is that it is quite inclusive compared to some traditional sports these days,” John points out. “If you want to play at some of the high levels of traditional sports, you need to be, like, a six-foot-tall mountain and go to the gym every day, whereas, in some [esports] games, you could have [players with] different abilities, male or female, playing on the same level.” 

While that potential for gender parity is certainly there, that doesn’t mean the world of esports currently reflects it in reality. Like everywhere else in our society, the gender pay gap and glass ceilings exist in esports; piggybacking off the volatile sexism that has been so deeply embedded into gaming culture – especially online gaming culture – for decades. Women have been left with little recourse but to set up their own closed leagues and communities as a result, necessary but unfortunate indictments of the industry as a whole.   

John has seen this divide mimicked in Wales but is keen to stop it from being the norm. “In our review last year, something like 80% of our players were male. So it’s a case of trying to bring that down because we know that there are [other] people wanting to get into it and there is an opportunity for women to enter esports and compete at a similar level [as men]. But it’s about giving them the opportunity where they can enter in a safe environment, [one] where they feel comfortable to play and develop. 

“There are a couple of things that we’ve got going on: we have a women’s ambassador for Esports Wales and we have separate [online] chat channels where they can communicate. I don’t think it’s a case of focusing on them to grow, it’s more of a case of making sure that we offer support and not leave them out. That’s one of the big things we’re trying to do – make sure we’re covering all areas of esports so everyone grows.

“What we wouldn’t want to do is only support, as I said, that main area that is probably 80% male because if we do that, we’re going to be losing 20% of our player base because we’ve not given them those opportunities and bought them in for these tournaments.”

The other controversial issue is the day-to-day regime of a professional esports player. Though they’re not quite put through the same muscular wear-and-tear that other athletes are, repetitive strain injury is certainly a possibility from all that clicking, and accusations of gruelling training schedules contributing to burnout and mental health problems as a result of the pressure to perform have plagued top South Korean teams, in particular. Scandals relating to performance-enhancing drugs, meanwhile, have also become prevalent with esports’ rising popularity, where concentration, stamina and reaction times can make the difference between digital life and death – not to mention a whopping payout in the world’s biggest competitions. 

Don’t expect any of that from Wales’ national team, of course. “We’re not expecting them to be playing 24/7,” John confirms, stipulating that “scrimming” sessions [players playing against each other in unranked matches] will only take place for those selected three or four times a week. “The main part is them playing together and running through tactics. Roster selection is important: It’s the same as in team-based traditional sport in that it’s how they gel as players, how they communicate as players and then finding that right mix. So it might not be about putting out the best player but putting out the best team.

“What we don’t want to do is see them burn out. Putting them in front of the same game over and over, they’re not going to develop as much as if we put them through the right training. I do think diet is good as part of a fitness plan, and we’ve also got blog posts on our website regarding things like sleep. Someone who plays all night and then gets up to do a tournament the next morning with two or three hours of sleep is obviously not going to be competing on the same level as they would with a decent night’s sleep the night before.”

By now, half a century since it began, esports are easily as huge as most other major traditional sports on a financial and participation level (only beaten by the NFL in the States in terms of viewership now). Yet there remains that lingering aura of cultural nicheness, especially in the UK. Many studies have put numbers on how long it’ll be before esports is even more dominant in America, which, with companies like Disney bringing it to broadcast television, is much farther ahead than it is over here. How far does John estimate the UK is from mainstream acceptance of it; when will going to the pub and seeing an esports match televised alongside football and rugby games become the new normal? The answer might be generational.

“I think it’s just a matter of time: probably about five to 10 years. The way esports is growing, if we just look at like the last year, about six or seven of colleges in Wales now have qualifications in esports for B-Tech and a number of universities are looking at degrees in esports. There are also a lot more sponsorships coming in.

“And if you speak to learners coming through schools and colleges and ask them what they want to be, these days, they’re not saying footballers or rugby players, they’re saying YouTuber or streamer. Those [people] are your player base and viewership. But some of them haven’t got that capital behind them to be going out and buying an esports shirt or going to a pub to watch a match because of the age limit. So, it’s not there yet.

“Once we start getting the grassroots scene developing and a system in place that allows us [Esports Wales] to develop, year on year, that’s when it’s going to start picking up because it allows those players who played in a college or a university team to move into a local team, which could then play in a Welsh national league or a UK league. That’s where we’re hoping to see growth: similar to having your football and rugby clubs, you’ll have your local esports club that you can turn up to and play, either as a casual gamer or on an amateur/professional level.”

The Welsh Masters runs until Sat 9 Apr. Info: here.

words HANNAH COLLINS