Esports should follow skateboarding’s lead to going mainstream

If esports wants to make it big, and I mean really big — “your colleagues talking about at work” big — it needs a Tony Hawk. Here’s why.

Skateboarding and esports are not sports right? Hello, Olympics

Alongside punk rock sports like surfing, skateboarding is now making its belated gnarly nose grind of a debut to finally represented at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. Factual data on the economics of skateboarding is pretty hard to come by, but a report by Technavio estimated the sport will be worth around $5 billion by 2020 in annual revenue, with about 11 million active skateboarders in the world. That’s a lot of credibility for the Olympic committee to consider (no doubt presented in a nice A4-printed, bound folder).