Italian academic calls for separate rules for esports

Emanuela M. De Leo, a contract professor of third-sector taxation, said esports are not traditional sports and require their own regulation, speaking at an event at Italy's Chamber of Deputies on 14 October. The event, held in the Sala del Refettorio, was titled "E-sport e fiscalità nell'economia digitale".

De Leo said the sector changes faster than rule-making and academic research can follow, and that a book on the subject published shortly before the event already appeared out of date. She said the idea for the volume came from a discussion with Fabio and Katia Righi.

She addressed the relationship between esports and the Olympic movement, citing the esports Olympics project announced at Paris 2024 and later postponed. De Leo said she had discussed the organisation of the event with representatives of the Saudi Olympic movement at SportAccord in Lausanne, alongside Katia Righi, and that the differences with the International Olympic Committee could not be bridged.

According to De Leo, the failure of the Olympic project does not indicate a crisis in the sector but shows its capacity to grow through different competitive circuits and economic models. She cited the Esports World Cup, with prize pools in the tens of millions of dollars, many professional players and a global audience of millions of viewers.

De Leo said the difference from conventional sport is not simply physical or mental, noting that disciplines such as bridge and chess are also recognised. She said the distinction lies in the structure of electronic competitions and players' dependence on the companies that own the games.

Comparing esports with football, she said a ball and a field are enough to play the traditional game, while competitive play of a video game depends on the game's availability and on infrastructure run by the publisher. She said even the best player in the world cannot continue in a discipline if the publisher decides to shut down the server.

The dependence on publishers' commercial decisions, De Leo said, also matters economically and legally given the investments made by professional players, teams, tournament organisers and other operators. A title being modified, abandoned or made unusable for commercial reasons raises questions about the stability of professional activity and the protection of those involved, she said.

De Leo called for a regulatory framework that recognises the specific features of video game competitions rather than automatically transferring the rules already in place for sport. She acknowledged points of contact with traditional sport, including competition, fair play and shared rules, but said structural differences remain over intellectual property, platform management and the power held by game publishers.

She concluded that esports are a world of their own, and that recognising their peculiarities is the starting point for specific regulation able to accompany the sector's economic growth and address the legal and fiscal questions raised by a global market.