While that's true, there are also advantages to being non-physical: * You can play way, way more of the game on a daily/weekly basis because you don't really h

While that's true, there are also advantages to being non-physical: * You can play way, way more of the game on a daily/weekly basis because you don't really have to worry about endurance/recovery in the same way. * With a few clicks you can grab opponents and teammates of comparable skill near-instantly, at any time, whereas finding a game for a given sport is much more beholden to schedules and other logistical difficulties. I suspect eSports works better for the long tail because of that second point: much harder to develop a critical mass when people have to be local. If you think about how many different sports vs competitive video games you could find a match for with modest effort in the coming week, video games would probably win by a least an order of magnitude, maybe two orders.