Esports New Zealand is challenging High Performance Sport's decision to leave them out of additional funding.
HPSNZ will invest over $160 million into various Kiwi sporting organisations over the next four years - and esports has been left out.
New Zealand Esports CEO joined D'Arcy Waldegrave to discuss.
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You're listening to the Sports Talk podcast with Darcy Wildergrave from News Talk zed B.
I'm good, Darcy, thanks for having me on the show. Good.
Great to have you on Bold. It's been a while, but here we are. The CEO of e Sport in New Zealand. You have been told no, a slap back from High Performance Sport in z You don't count, you don't qualify. Your initial reaction.
To this, yeah, unfortunately shocked. I think had to put it in one word. We're obviously a massive, a massive sport from a participation lens. We were a pretty small financial partner with High Performance Sport and we had big dreams because they've done really well on the global stage of the last three years on literally the smell of an oily rag. And so not to only have had our application denied, but then to take a step backwards from that and to have denied any investment in US from you know, the fifteen thousand we had over three years, it was pretty shocking because it just I think it sends a message to show that the government aren't interested in, you know, innovation in the future sport of esports for what's role it plays with the youth. It was just feels out of touch.
Let's just roll it back. There will be an argument and I've heard this number of times. It will carry on that and you know what I'm going to say, e sport has got sport in the name, but it's not a sport. It's just people sitting on their bums twiddling their fingers. How do you respond to that because you would have heard that before.
Yeah, I mean there's a million different ways you can respond to it. You can talk about, you know, like the research and the studies of how it improves your physical your thing, or your mental activity or anything else. But I think at the end of the day, we're never ever going to convince people who don't get it that it's a sport. But the fact is is that the Olympic movement are on board. The government recognized it as a sport in twenty twenty. Like for those and anyone under the age of you know, forty probably now know that it's a sport and they're involved in it and their kids are doing it, and it's just so popular. So you cannot get it, but there are lots of people who do and it's really important to and it's impossible to deny that the data of that. So, you know, just like football, I don't I'm not a I don't enjoy football particularly, I don't get it. I don't like watching people cook a pall back and forth on the field for ninety minutes and nothing happening. But people are nutty about the Premier League. They can have that. I'm not gonna, you know, contest it's not a sport that it should be pulled from funding because I'm not a fan of it. But you know, you can't deny it's a thing.
People look at the physical exertion and that's generally what they consider a sport, and they see es sports and go I don't see anyone sweeting. I don't see anyone getting physical. I just see soft drinks and chips. I mean that's an extreme case. But how do you respond to that?
Yeah, honestly, that stereotype comes from the don't get it category because soft drinks and chips give you know, you're not healthy when you're eating that stuff. And people who do esports know this is like one oh one. This is what you learn when you start is if you don't have a healthy body, you cannot have a healthy mind, like imagine trying to do an exam the morning after a hangover. Like if you haven't treating your body right, your brain doesn't work and then you can't win these sports. And on the physicalities side of things, if you want to bring in like the how active does it need to be to be a sport? Then where does that slippery slope like go does that mean that you know Formula one or racing isn't a sport you're just sitting on your ass on a chair, driving your driving your steering wheel, or is prone shooting or shooting in the Olympics, you're just pulling your trigger finger and breathing or darts. How physical do you need to be to be a sport? And that's why I think, you know, it's really a non argument. But again just from the people who don't get it, because for the people who actually been to an esports event or for event people who participate in esport on the weekly, like the competition, the practice, the commitment, the sacrifice, the teamwork, like all of those things you need, it's obviously undeniably a sport for the people who are in the space, Like I said, we're never going to convince people who don't know what esports is or have no interest in it, that it is a sport. But there are hundreds of thousands of kiwis, and they guarantee there's one in almost every home of every listener listening right now. Are people doing it? And if there's that many people doing it, what's the point in denying it?
Jonathan Jensen joins the CEO of Esport New Zealand. Now your president Connor English, and he's using the quote you've been using. Perhaps they just don't get it. How can you make people at high performance sport understand the relevance of esport and buy into this. Look, I'm of the older generation, mid fifties. I look at it and go they didn't look like a sport to me. But what you're saying about football, what I like and what I don't like it is irrelevant because people are buying into this, and they're buying them into it big time. It is clear and present, and to ignore it to me is borderline insanity.
Yeah, and I agree with you, and that's why when you ask me what can we do to make them understand? Today? This decision has left me baffled on that because when we went in we showed them that we have had, you know, representation at every major esports have been over the last three years. We had Kate McCarthy who won the UCI World Cycling Esports Championship. We had lead dem Ocky won the America's Cup e Sailing Series. We had bronze medals of the Global Games. If you look at like the sports performance track records, we've been hit in wickets and we're doing so well on almost you know, no funding, and it's across a range of different areas. And we presented this to high Performance Sports saying, look, we have a real opportunity here to on the cusp of this explosion of this new interest industry, lead the world and continue getting world leading results. And they just basically turned around and said, look, we don't care, like we don't recognize it. And we can show them the data to show them that, you know, esports players are twice as likely to play physical sport than non esports players because they're competitive people who do this. We can show them the data around gaming and esports being different and esports being a place that actually introduces a lot of kids into sport in a space where they're struggling. But it seems to be that no matter what we do with all those arguments and players which we thought were really compelling, didn't matter. Just comes down to make you wonder, you know, who are the people making these decisions and why are they're not taking the time to recognize its importance.
International Olympic Committee are debuting an Olympic e Sports Games next year, a brand new Olympic sport. You'd think cutting edge wise that the government would be or high performance sport. New Zealand would like to be at the front of that wave. That kind of sits nicely with what New Zealand want to do as far as their aspirations technologically.
You'd think so. And again like this isn't it. It's not as if you know, it's just another sport in the Olympics. It's its own Olympic Games, and so it has this gravitas about it that a lot of countries are starting to take seriously. And like I said, we're rather at the forefront of this. We've got current world champions and multiple disciplines that we could show up to these things and we could blow the world away and do what we love doing as New Zealander is by punching above our weight. But is that possible anymore? You know, I don't know, And it's kind of it is it's shocking that we're deciding we're making the conscious decision. I say we, but I mean someone it's making the conscious decision to turn away from all that momentum that's been built and kind of just give up on this new space that we've been leading. And that's that you're don't going to give up?
What's your recourse? What do you do now? What does the community do? What does Esport New Zealand do to try and wrestle some funding at a high performance? Ord you just go private and give it up.
Well, we do what we've always done, which we've always had very limited, you know, governmental financial support, and so we're used to We operate on the a single percentage point of many of the other sports in terms of revenue and turnover. So we continue doing what we do. We've got great partners through like Chorus, Red Bull, Baracca, We've got lots and lots of commercial partners who help us do what we do. So we're going to continue driving, We're going to continue investing. We know we've got awesome talent. It's just disheartening, I guess because these athletes who are training every day and there, you know, as well as their full time job to pay their way across the world to compete in these events. The biggest thing they want when you talk to them is recognition and even just being part of the High Performance program. For the last three years we've had athletes who are part of the High Performance Athlete program and they feel that recognition because they feel like they're actually included and accepted. And now that's being taken away. It's just another hit I guess against against that. But you know, we're in a news space. I think that's part of the difficulty of being in a in a rapidly moving startup, you know environment. And so we're gonna keep doing what we're doing. We're going to keep performing. We're not going to keep pushing players out there. We're going to keep marching towards the Olympic Esports Games next year hopefully get some good results. Yeah, we just wish we had the recognition and the support of the country while we did it.
Jonathan Jansen, CEO of Esport, and you said on me, thank you very much for your time and your explanation. You look after yourself and have a very merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas, do you two, and thanks of the time.
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