10 Reasons Why Russian CyberSport Will Die

Due to Russia’s attack on Ukraine and the unprecedented sanctions imposed everywhere in the world, it has become obvious to the vast majority that the slogan “cybersports are out of politics” has turned out to be an illusion.

The short-sighted policy of the Russian leadership and the silent support of the majority of the population of the Russian Federation led to a large-scale war, unprecedented in world practice international sanctions, which not only hurt, but actually deprived the Russian cybersport of any future.

In this article we will look at the ten main reasons why Russian cybersport will die in the near future and why it makes no sense to engage in it now if you are a citizen of Russia.

All major tournament operators have already banned or will soon ban Russian teams from playing under their names and in their team uniforms. In addition teams are forbidden to advertise their sponsors.
Most of the countries where world tournaments are held are in Europe and are members of the NATO bloc or the European Union. While previously many of these countries were on friendly terms with Russia, today they all want to distance themselves from those who are already called 21st-century fascists.
Some leagues and tournaments forbid playing Russians at all, others forbid only teams from Russia, but you have to understand that Russians, because of the language barrier, very rarely play in European teams, mostly they played in Russian or Ukrainian teams.Obviously, without advertising partners and playing under someone else’s tags, teams will soon collapse, because their existence will simply be meaningless.
Russians will not be able to play in Ukrainian teams.It has already become obvious to everyone that the idea of Russian-Ukrainian teams looks in the eyes of Ukrainians as a traitor. Such lineups are just unthinkable in the eyes of the fans and harm the image of the team. At the same time, many top Russian players played in Ukrainian teams, and now they will either have to get Ukrainian citizenship, which is not so easy, or look for a new job, which seems almost unrealistic.
Russian teams will not be able to get visas to the U.S. and many European countries. Without visas, teams will not only be unable to attend European tournaments, but also to organize bootcamps in Europe. Travel to the U.S. has been problematic for players from Russia before, and now it will become virtually impossible. No Russian team will ever know ahead of time if they can go to a tournament or not, it will kill any motivation and sense in training.
Russian teams and players will not be able to attend many tournaments because of the lack of air links. European countries have closed the skies to Russian planes, and Russia has responded by doing the same for EU planes. To get to a tournament in Europe, Russians have to fly to one of the countries where their planes can fly to, and from there fly to the EU. All this makes the flights very difficult, many times longer and more expensive.
Players with Russian citizenship will not be taken to foreign teams.If before the main problem was the language barrier, now taking Russians to foreign teams just makes no sense even if they are very talented, because there will always be a chance that an important tournament will be held in a country where Russians won’t enter, and that means that all team preparation will go to waste. In such a situation, it’s much safer for European teams to develop their own players rather than chasing Russian stars.
International companies will stop sponsoring Russian eSports.A huge number of international brands that were partners of the largest Russian teams, local leagues and tournaments have already left Russia. With their departure all domestic championships and leagues will definitely suffer, many second and third echelon teams will collapse, and TIR-1 teams will lose a huge share of sponsorship and will have to tighten their belts tighter. Even Russian global sponsors like Lukoil will most likely refuse to sponsor Russian cybersports, as the teams will not be able to promote them internationally.
International tournaments will not be held in Russia, and Russian studios will not be able to buy the rights to cover world events.In the coming years, Russia will not see large cybersport tournaments on its territory, not a single foreign team will come there. Most likely Russia will also lose the Russian-language broadcasts of world tournaments, at least Russian studios almost certainly will not be able to get the rights to such broadcasts. At the same time, the Ukrainian studios, which are in the majority in the region, will not be profitable to carry out Russian-language broadcasts, as they will not be able to sign Russian sponsors and pay back the purchase of rights.
Many cybersports disciplines will be closed for Russia. For example in Fortnite from the territory of Russia it is already forbidden to participate in official in-game tournaments. Many games are removed from the markets in Russia, which means that in tournaments in these games from Russia will not be able to play. The company Valve has a wait-and-see attitude, does not prohibit for players from Russia their games, but this situation may change under pressure from the world community.
Many eSports media, publishers and bloggers will cut their work or will be closed.In connection with the blocking of a number of social networks are already almost dead many bloggers and publishers. In the near future are going to close Discord, under threat is Youtube. Perhaps there will only remain publishers in Telegram and VK, but soon they will simply have nothing to write about, because people are primarily interested in their players and teams, which are now closed to perform on the international scene. In addition all media and bloggers will lose the lion’s share of income from partners and simply will not exist.
Engagement in eSports will become a very expensive pleasure.Such leading chip manufacturers as AMD, Intel, NVidia have announced their withdrawal from the Russian market. They were followed by those who make graphics cards, motherboards and other components, without which it is impossible to build a computer for eSports. Of course, Russia will not be left without computers, components will be imported from China and other countries, but their price will go up significantly, and the availability will go down many times. For the end consumer, along with the drop in the standard of living in Russia due to the sanctions, it will mean the increase in the cost of computers many times over.Such an increase in the cost of technology will practically cut off the opportunity to train the new generation, which means that in a few years the Russian cybersport scene will fall into decline.Besides the above points, there is another, perhaps the main one. The Internet may become “slow” and will not allow normal competition online. Olds remember that once cybersports existed only in computer clubs and it was impossible to play online because of the huge ping. Today it is likely to exclude Russia from the key European nodes of traffic exchange, which will force the Internet to work through other nodes, such as Asia, which means that Russian players can only play with Europe with a huge ping and will be forced to train only within the country, depriving the opportunity to train and compete with Europeans in equal conditions even online.

*Best Esports betting sites according to apexmap.io

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Sean Morrison

Сhief editor at Apexmap.io

Commissioner/three-time winner of the Mario Party Championship Series, eSports expert