The Eurispes Italy Report highlights the growth of esports in our country, on 33 percent of people who follow events based on video game competitions every day.
Rome - There is also talk of videogames and esports in the 2021 Italy Report drawn up by the Eurispes, presented at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome today, May, the 13th.
Highlighting both the spread of the phenomenon and the increase in the number of people who daily follow events based on video game competitions in our country: 466 thousand (+33 percent compared to the previous year). And this user base spreads to about 1,410,000 (+20 percent), if we also take into account those who follow an E-Sports event several times a week.
The "Virtual sports in the year zero" sheet then reports other important figures.
It is estimated that the global esports industry will reach a value of $1.5 billion during 2021. In Italy, 8 out of 10 people declare that they have played a video game at least once in the last 6 months (Euromedia Research - Multiplayer.it). People mainly play from the smartphone (35.2 percent), from the fixed console (27.5 percent), from the Pc (20.6 percent).
Furthermore, there is a widespread idea that e-sports support the development of an open and inclusive environment (66 percent) (Nielsen 2020).
BUSINESS MODELS IN ITALY AND THE FUTURE OF THE MARKET - E-Sports in Asia (South Korea above all), the United States and the United Kingdom are now a consolidated reality; in Europe, the structurally “most advanced” country is currently France.
Three different kinds of gaming venues have been developed: Arenas, E-Sports bars and Lan Halls.
In Italy, clubs are emerging combining the characteristics of the classic bar or pub with those of a modern arcade, as a consequence of the growing diffusion of the ESports phenomenon in our country too. These are entertainment venues rather than training, where you can watch live competitions of the main “e-sports” meetings at national and international level. The challenge will be to understand which business model is the most suitable to our market.
THE ESPORTS RECOGNITION PATH - The International Olympic Committee stressed that the Olympic movement cannot ignore the growth of virtual sports, noting that competitive video games involve physical activity comparable to that required in more traditional sports. In the 2020 Italy Report, Eurispes emphasized the need to obtain legal recognition, in the field of sports law, of video games that reflect the values laid down in the Olympic Charter.
This would also make it possible to control risk situations, such as illegal betting and illegal behavior. With a note dated 22 May 2020, the president of Coni acknowledged that he had shared with the national council the report on electronic sports presented by the president of the E-Sports Italia promoting committee, which highlighted, among other things, the priority need of a representative subject of all national realities and in line with the principles of the sports system.
One year later, it should be noted that the recognition path has been traced, but the question of which electronic sports will be recognized under sports law remains open.
On this point, it should be noted that during a summit on 12 December 2020, the representatives of the Ioc provided some important information, making a distinction between four categories of video games: virtual sports in which there is the player's physical activity; virtual sports where there is no physical element; games of fantasy and strategy; pure entertainment games. For the moment, the Ioc has urged international federations to recognize the first category, with particular attention to the regulation of fair competition, respect for the values of sport and reaching new audience. There is also an abnormal situation that is occurring in Italy: on the one hand, our country is very late, compared to France, Germany and Spain, as regards the development of infrastructures where you can play and compete with video games; on the other hand, on the institutional level, it is leading the way on a legal and regulatory level, thanks to the work of the ESport Italia - Coni Promoting Committee, the cooperation of Eurispes and some of the main Italian universities.
THE ITALY REPORT "FOR A NEW RECONSTRUCTION" - The Italy Report, now in its 33rd edition this year, is composed by six chapters, each of them offers a dichotomous reading of the reality examined. Each chapter is illustrated through essays and 60 phenomenological cards. Therefore, issues that the Institute considers representative of the current political, economic and social issues of our country are addressed through a dual reading of reality. The thematic dichotomies identified for the 2021Italy Report are: Continuity/Division, Oikos/Kosmos, Sustainability/Unsustainability, Science/Consciousness, Health/Illness, South/North.
The Report also deals with various other topical issues, through the phenomenological cards such as, for example, migration phenomena, the innovation capacity of Made in Italy, sustainable fashion, communication conveyed through social networks, E- Sport, the southern question, the professions of the future, the enhancement of human capital, the tax authorities and possible reforms, robotics and industry 4.0, ethical fashion, digital school, pupils with special educational needs, smart cities and new housing needs, infrastructures.
According to the surveys carried out, then, the tendencies of the Italians on many issues emerge. As regards the trust in institutions, for example, the President of the Republic, the army and the police, achieve an excellent result in terms of consents. The magistrature, the church and the trade unions fall. The work of regional presidents divides public opinion in half, with a predominance of discouraged people, yet many are asking for greater independence for the regions (54.7 percent), while the direct election of the president of the Republic is still not convincing.
People are pessimistic over the future of the country's economy, yet for most citizens their economic condition in the last year remained stable, with positive signs about savings, even if mortgage and rent are heavier and the use of installments is widespread.
Europe seems essencial to get out of the crisis, but the widespread opinion is that Italy must count more as a member state. The confident prevail over the arrival of European funds, albeit slightly.
Even today, in the relationships between women and men there are too many differences in work and in society, the most discriminated are transgenders, homeless and gypsies.
As regards ethical issues, many Italians say they are for the protection of unmarried couples, heterologous fecundation, euthanasia and living wills, and against assisted suicide, same-sex adoptions, soft drugs and prostitution.
Speaking of health, if the mind market is today worth a billion euros globally and the Nhs invests little in psychological assistance, the data collected in the Eurispes survey indicate that in Italy one out of 5 interviewed (19 percent) have taken psychotropic drugs, in the last year 27.2 percent went to a psychologist, 5.6 percent to a psychiatrist.
As regards the Eurispes survey relating to eating habits, the stability of the number of vegetarians is highlighted, "without" diets and the use of vitamin supplements are very widespread.
As for animals, we find them in 4 out of 10 houses and the trend is to have more than one. The monthly expenditure that is dedicated to them, in 63.4 percent of cases, is between €31 and €100.
FARA (EURISPES PRESIDENT): "A PEACEFUL CULTURAL REVOLUTION IS NEEDED" - In the general considerations that open the Report, the Eurispes president, Gian Maria Fara, stresses: "The pandemic has questioned values, interests, choices, ethics, priorities, perspectives. It has redefined alliances, political borders, relations between states. It has imposed new economic and social paths. It has highlighted the fragility and delays of the system, inefficiencies and inability to manage complexity. It has shown the failure of magical claims of regional autonomies. But, above all, it has highlighted the need to rebuild a state identity, compressed over the years by a devolution downwards, to the Regions, and upwards, to Europe. At the same time, it has dismissed the idea that citizens can effectively replace - and at a supposedly higher ethical level - political institutions.
Covid is also the healthy 'educational slap' given by a grouchy father to scold the reckless son to a sense of responsibility. A microscopic virus has qualified the huge subject of the future as a 'necessity' and imposed on all generations the urgency to engage in the cultivation of long-term thinking.
The disorganized country, as it is today, is unable to meet the challenges that the pandemic has launched. Without a peaceful 'Cultural Revolution' we will be doomed to oblivion, to the loss of that little bit of identity left.
Meanwhile, intolerance, insecurity and the search for a possible future are growing, but above all the demand for a confident leader, to free the country from the uncertainty and approximation, with which it has been leaded since the beginning of the pandemic. The Draghi government - the result of the constant work of the President of the Republic - is the sign of the awareness, among the various political forces, of the gravity of the situation.
Contentious institutions, contradicting or distant from each other spread a sense of division where, instead, the perception of a 'close ranks' should pass at every level; hence, the general distress, the uncertainty of the present, the fear of the future. The arrival of the pandemic is part of a very difficult situation in a country marked by a deep economic and social crisis and a demographic crisis that reduces the number of births year after year. In short, an increasingly poor and old country which, at the same time, is experiencing the progressive weakening of the middle classes, the true backbone of democracy.
If, as Shakespeare said in Julius Caesar, 'men at some time are masters of their fates', this is the time to demonstrate it, by deploying all the wisdom, commitment, civic sense, spirit of cooperation needed, putting aside any personal interest.
The changes that are occurring in the notions of time, in the relationship between past, present and future are particularly important; as in the notions of space, in the relationship between local, national, international, between virtual and real. What future do we want to build?
The construction of future scenarios goes beyond a simple projection of the present situation: it requires a vision, an idea of a possible future, a system of reference values, essentially a strong thought, able to guide our actions today towards a very specific direction. In this sense, the warnings of one of the fathers of strategic planning, Hazan Özbekhan, co-founder and first director of the Club di Roma, 1968, still apply today: 'Planning is not projecting the present into the future, but the opposite, having an idea of future to be grafted into the present'".