Berlin (SID) – The federal government will not take any further measures to promote eSports during the current legislative period. This resulted in a written question from the Bundestag member Monika Lazar (Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen) to the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The SID has the answer.
In 2018, the CDU, CSU and SPD announced in their coalition agreement that they wanted to fully recognize eSports as a separate sport with club and association rights and to support them in creating an Olympic perspective.
Since then, eSport associations have endeavored to be classified as non-profit in the federal tax code because of the promotion of sport. This is now off the table. eSports could “even today be non-profit according to existing law”, was the answer from the Federal Ministry of the Interior, which referred to youth welfare and the promotion of education as funding purposes.
Whether or not eSports are classified as a sport is to be decided “by organized sport and the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) within the framework of the autonomy of sport.” The BMI also described the creation of an Olympic perspective as a “task of autonomous sport”.
The DOSB, however, is sometimes critical of eSport. The umbrella organization divides the scene into sports games that are eligible for funding, as well as other and more popular titles such as League of Legends or Counter-Strike, which it does not recognize.
On the part of politics, meanwhile, “no further legislative measures to promote eSports” would be sought until the federal election next autumn, the Federal Ministry of the Interior continued. Lazar was disappointed. “The federal government is breaking its promise of the coalition agreement to support eSports,” she said in a statement.
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