Football fans protest eSports, throw controllers on field

Fans of Swiss football team Young Boys protest eSports by throwing controllers and tennis balls onto the pitch during a game.

@anthony256

Published Sep 25, 2018 12:32 AM CDT
Updated Nov 3, 2020 11:50 AM CST

41 seconds read time

A story has been blowing up on social media over the weekend with a Swiss Super League match taking place between Young Boys and FC Basel, where the match was interrupted with fans protesting the increased influence of eSports on Swiss football teams.

Football fans protest eSports, throw controllers on field | TweakTown.com

Hundreds of fans from both teams interrupted the match for a full two minutes, with huge anti-eSports banners being held up. The first of which was a massive pause button, while the other one said "scheiss eSports" which when translated, is "f*** eSports". PS4 controllers were also thrown onto the field, with 'f*** eSports' written on them.

Most professional sports clubs (not just football) are looking at expanding, if they haven't already, into the world of eSports. There are professional players making millions with 10s if not millions of times more fans online with Twitch streams and the like, with entire eSports teams dominating the world. Basel (one of the teams on the ground during the match) has an eSports division for FIFA.

NEWS SOURCES:twitter.com, eurogamer.net

Anthony Garreffa

Anthony joined the TweakTown team in 2010 and has since reviewed 100s of graphics cards. Anthony is a long time PC enthusiast with a passion of hate for games built around consoles. FPS gaming since the pre-Quake days, where you were insulted if you used a mouse to aim, he has been addicted to gaming and hardware ever since. Working in IT retail for 10 years gave him great experience with custom-built PCs. His addiction to GPU tech is unwavering and has recently taken a keen interest in artificial intelligence (AI) hardware.