Now, you may have noticed some trend when you tune into Fox Sports or ESPN as a reflex action since we’ve had no live sports broadcasts for more than 8 weeks now.
You will either see NBA2K games being televised on ESPN, meet NASCAR iRacing broadcast by the FS1, or even see that both of them are televising the WWE programming. These are the only live or live to tape sports entertainment activities that people can enjoy as the bedeviling health and economic problem lingers, or some may take to viewing professional wrestling.
Esports has thrust itself into the limelight in many different forms in the last decade. Whether it’s down to CS:GO tournaments like ESL or the Fortnite World Cup, which saw the youngest professional esports player scoop up the biggest esports prize pool, there’s no doubt that WWE wants to get in the action. Betting on esports is something which has also revolutionised the genre and to find some of the best gambling sites to bet on esports – CSGOBettor.com lists some of the top sites to play at, along with referral codes and bonuses.
There is no doubt that professional wrestling is a make-believe drama with characters that are not real, and the results are all predetermined. However, with the suspension of sporting activities across the globe and everybody staying at home to save the world from the menacing situation, watching Drew McIntyre and Brock Lesnar slug it out in the wrestling ring now brings a rush of hidden emotions, expressing what people have been missing in sports.
The WrestleMania by WWE, which stands as the Super Bowl in the professional wrestling world, was hosted recently by the WWE. This was previously billed to take place at the Raymond James Stadium, which the Tampa Bay Buccaneers use as their home ground. If it did hold as previously planned, it would have made history as the 14th consecutive WrestleMania to be hosted in a 70,000 capacity football stadium. The event of 2021 has been slated to happen at the Rams and Chargers home ground in Inglewood known as SoFi Stadium.
Owing to the current health menace, WrestleMania took place behind closed doors at the WWE’s training facility in Orlando, Florida. This event that took place over two nights featured Rob Gronkowski, the former tight end of the New England Patriots as the host.
WWE stars Xavier Woods and Cesaro have watched keenly as wrestling and esports takes the center stage. Both of them have had long stretches on the sidelines due to injury, and they now mostly spend their time enjoying video games. They even have twitch channels with huge followers from all over the world that watch them stream themselves as they play games.
For Cesaro, their job specification in wrestling is to get to the nooks and cranny of the world and bring people together from wherever they are, and the same thing is applicable to video games and esports. For him, no matter where people are in the world, they can watch wrestling at the same time and can also play video games together at the same time.
For Woods, this seems like the chance that the rest of the world has to unearth a strong kind of passion for wrestling and video games – the type that he has been on with his fellow nerds for many years.
For woods, while some people are confused on what will keep them busy at home, he already has a balcony that is an arcade of some sorts, and this means that the new stay at home rule never gets on his nerves. For him, when someone is in love with wrestling and video games at a tender age, they will grow to discover that almost everybody wants to go to parties during their teenage years at high school. Because of that trend, people who continued watching wrestling or playing video games while in high school were mostly made fun of. For him, those that remained with the video games and wrestling, and are still die-hard fans of the two are those that were able to stomach the entire insult and jokes of high school years and hold onto the things that make them happy. He went ahead to gloat that we are all nerds of the same kind, and that things that have been his pastime all along are now becoming the world’s only available sources of live entertainment at present.
But Cesaro has not been sitting home playing video games all the time. He has been investing in Tribe Gaming alongside Gordon Hayward, the Boston Celtics forward. Tribe Gaming was established by Patrick “Chief Pat” Carney the gaming influencer in 2017 to offer mobile gaming.
For Carney, the outlook for gaming right now is very interesting. He said he is not looking at it from the point of view of what happens on the TV, but with most of the people staying at home at the moment, one of the happiest activities to engage in now is to play Fortnite together. He cannot hide his excitement at the fact that gaming is now the preferred object of relaxation for many people.
Now, the center stage that professional wrestling and esports have assumed at the moment is not only witnessed on sports TV networks, but also at the betting sites that are trying to find live events that their fans can wager on. Both sports come with low limits, especially pro wrestling which presents an already determined result.
For Adam Burns, the manager of BetOnline sportsbook, they’ve been doing everything possible to ensure that there are available ways for people to enjoy betting entertainment while the world is locked down. The amount of bets on NBA2K has been incredible. There aren’t many limits. What is obtainable for WWE is $100, while for NBA2K, its $250. However, people are still enjoying it to the fullest.
Woods is optimistic that the new fans that professional wrestling and esports has garnered within this period will not desert the two sports when the world gets back to normal and actions return in the traditional sports.
For him, he hopes that people would not forget the work that professional wrestling and video games did during these trying times immediately things get to normal. For him, they should remember that it was video games and professional wrestling that stayed back to entertain people when every other leisure disappeared.
