5. Welsh Conservatives Debate: E-sports

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:28 pm on 8 May 2019.

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Photo of Rhun ap Iorwerth Rhun ap Iorwerth Plaid Cymru 3:28, 8 May 2019

I am grateful to the Conservatives for bringing forward this debate. It is indeed a debut for this topic. It was interesting just watching the first speakers and wondering whether it was David Melding or Janet Finch-Saunders or Jack Sargeant that was most into e-gaming. I'm glad Jack Sargeant spilt the beans that it was him. I wouldn't have been ageist in any way by suggesting it wasn't the other two. I am an e-gamer myself—not to a professional standard, but I do have a 15-year-old son who I can still beat at FIFA from time to time, and count me in for the Assembly competition.

It is a sign of how we have moved on. When I was working at the BBC, we used to have Subbuteo competitions at lunch time—no need for fast broadband for that. But we are talking about the pastimes, the leisure activities, and, indeed, as we are establishing here, the sport of the future. And I say that as somebody who is passionate about pushing the agenda of physical activity for young children in particular. And I don't think we should confuse support for e-sports as an entity in itself with somehow that being a barrier to physical activity, because, obviously, we cannot think in that way. But I've learned a lot about the notion of e-sports and how it has grown and grown as an economic power over recent years—the idea that we have here a £1 billion industry, the idea that we have world championships in e-sports, the idea that university departments are putting on courses involving e-sports, the idea that US colleges have e-sports clubs that are growing in size from year to year. This is—