I (like, I imagine, many people here) have never been interested in sports but managed to get very interested in eSports - itself a blasphemy to sports-culture

I (like, I imagine, many people here) have never been interested in sports but managed to get very interested in eSports - itself a blasphemy to sports-culture - for a little while a few years ago, which has made me more sympathetic to sports fandom. The special charm of eSports was that the entire scene felt like it was ours - like it belonged to the generation of gamers who grew up playing the precursors of the popular games (RPGs & RTSs that were the progenitors of MOBAs, and of course Nintendo-land). This tribal feeling was foreign to me, but I imagine it's the same sense of allegiance that functions in normal-sports culture.