How Global Esports Federation and Refract Got Games into the Olympic Esports Series
IOC claims that GEF had no influence, but that's very hard to believe.
When the esports community hears about an “esports federation,” it often has a dim view because typically they are run by people who have no actual knowledge of how the esports ecosystem works and many of them are there to put their own self-interests above building and promoting esports in the specific regions that want to govern.
And let’s not take this lightly: they want to govern the region they have set up shop in. The mistake that stakeholders (Riot, Activision Blizzard, Tencent, etc.) have made is in paying them no mind at all until it is too late. In some countries all it takes is for one federation to secure cooperation with a government, a government’s body in charge of sports, or an official Olympic Committee. We won’t name any names here, but there are a number of federations in Southeast Asia that are recognized by governments in those countries as official governing bodies. What that means is if you want to run an esports thing there then you’re going to have to deal with these people in one way or another.
All of this is to say that these federations do have influence on bigger things, and they are pushing their own agendas and the things that they have financial ties to. Today I wrote about two groups who managed to get games that they had financial ties to added as part of the recently announced Olympic Esports Series and the Olympic Esports Week that will take place in Singapore this summer.
Those ties include Refract Technologies, the Global Esports Federation, and the Singapore Esports Alliance. The founder of Refract are founders also co-founders of the GEF and two of their games—Tic Tac Bow and Virtual Taekwondo—are official titles. We explain why this isn’t some odd coincidence in this TEA story. Please check it out and let me know what you think!