Former volleyball player Ana Moser, 54, Minister of Sports in the Lula government, said this Tuesday (10th) that she does not intend to invest in electronic sports.
“Electronic sport is an entertainment industry, it is not a sport,” said the minister in an interview with UOL. “The esports athlete trains, but Ivete Sangalo also trains to put on a show and she is not an athlete, she is an artist who works with entertainment.”
For the former volleyball player, the electronic game is not unpredictable. “It is designed by digital, cybernetic programming. It is programming, it is closed, different from sports.”
In charge of the Sports portfolio, she stated that she has no intention of investing in this area. Ana also mentioned that, when she was at the head of “Atletas pelo Brasil”, a non-profit organization that brings together athletes and former athletes around sports-related agendas, she acted to prevent the equation between the practice of sports and esports .
“We took a very strong action with the legislature for the text of the General Law [do Esporte] not open enough to fit into esports. The text is there protecting the root sport. The definition of sport had opened up an opening that could include electronic sports, and we closed that definition in order not to run that risk.”
Without the seal, e-sports athletes would not have access to Bolsa Atleta, the Sports Incentive Law and public sports resources in general.
In May of last year, the Education, Culture and Sport Commission (CE) of the Senate approved the bill for the National Sports Plan (PND), which had been in the House for five years and aims to reorganize the entire legal framework of the Brazilian sports system.
Among the novelties approved by the EC at the time was the concept of what sport is. The commission of jurists had suggested that sport is a “predominantly physical” activity, which was changed by the Constitution and Justice Commission (CCJ) when the text went through there, to also include practices such as chess and electronic games, which depend more on mind.
The text that went to the Plenary, however, takes up the previous concept, saying that sport is “any form of predominantly physical activity that, in an informal or organized way, has as its objective recreational activities, health promotion, high sports performance or entertainment”.
Since electronic games are not “predominantly physical”, they are not considered sports in this version.
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