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Valloni / News  / E-SPORTS IN SWITZERLAND
28 October 2024

E-SPORTS IN SWITZERLAND

E-Sports, or electronic sports, may be defined as competitive video gaming, played, individually or in teams, on special consoles and personal computers.

This form of video gaming involves humans competing against humans, usually with spectators, often millions of fans watching online and many also in person in arenas, just like traditional sports.

E-Sports tournaments involve amateur and professional gamers, who compete against one another for cash prizes, with millions of US Dollars for the winners of the major international events. For example, the E-Sports World Cup held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from 3 July – 25 August 2024 offered a total prize pool of US$62.5 million (around Sw.Frs. 54.18 million)! Incidentally, the first edition of the Olympic E-Sports Games will be held in 2025 in Saudi Arabia, which has around 23 million gamers, almost half of whom are women.

Furthermore, gamers can expect lucrative basic salaries, which are augmented by high-value sponsorship deals.

Unlike other sports, the sexes are not separated but mixed, in that women compete against men.

More and more women are participating in E-Sports as competitors, organisers of tournaments and designers of games.

E-Sports are open to all competitors, regardless of physical ability, so E-Sports are all-inclusive.

Not only do the games present sporting challenges, but also legal challenges to participants, organisers, designers and publishers of games and other stakeholders.

This is true internationally and also nationally, including Switzerland.

Legally speaking, E-Sports gives rise to contractual, employment, intellectual property issues, especially copyright and trademarks, broadcasting rights, and, with so much money involved, inevitably disputes and their settlement, by judicial and extra-judicial means, including mediation and arbitration, and, for technology-related issues, which may arise, by expert determination.

Likewise, in such a lucrative sport with high levels of sustained concentration required, sadly, doping can also be a legal issue.

Again, tax issues may arise, particularly double-taxation ones in such an international sport, and these issues may not only affect the participants, but also event organisers and others engaged in the sport. The incidence of VAT is also an important consideration for them.

Switzerland, compared with, for example, South Korea, the US, France and Germany, is a small market, but a developing one, and the E-Sports global market is worth more than US$1 billion (around Sw.Frs. 866.85 million) and growing.

There is no specific E-Sports legal framework applicable to the sport in Switzerland.

We can advise and assist professionally the various stakeholders in E-Sports on the various legal issues, as mentioned, that may arise in such an exciting sport with such a great future in the digital times in which we are living!

For further information, please contact Sara Botti by email at ‘botti@valloni.ch’