You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast count us Saturdays at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. This week we look at the bond between parent and child and how it can sometimes be a little too much. Bloomberg's Alison Schrager tells us how the kids of so called helicopter parents are less likely to take risks. We'll also look at those trendy new weight loss drugs and find out what doctors are asking. Bloomberg's Lisa Jarvis tells us just how long do you have to be on them? And
will your weight come back if you stop? Plus the latest push for a new sport in the Olympics, e Sports Adam Mentor writes about a strong argument for why the Olympic Committee might want to consider gaming as a new Olympic sport. At first, we begin with the return to the office or lack of it, and the housing market Now. Earlier this month, Bloomberg's Wall Street week Daily spoke with Joshua Pristall, head of real estate at Predium.
What we're seeing is that supply is being destroyed faster than demand as a result of rising rates, and that's really a function of what we call the mortgage lock in effect. So the averaging place mortgage is about three point six percent interest rate. People can't afford to move to a smaller house let alone, or larger if their thirty year mortgage is going to more than double. But
the real solution resides with building more supply. We continue to see the best value long term in the states that are in the smile of the country southeast southwest. Now that doesn't mean that there aren't great opportunities in other places, but where people are moving and where the job growth is is generally where there's.
Not enough housing.
And that was Joshua Pristall, head of real estate at Predium, speaking with Bloomberg's Wall Street week Daily earlier this month. Now, the big migration story of the pandemic was the emptying out of major US cities. As more employees begin to return partly or even fully to their offices, people have started talking about a possible rejuvenation, but not everyone believes
that's going to happen, at least not quite yet. Let's bring in Bloomberg opinion columnist Connorson, founder of Peachtree Creek Investments, and Connor, you talk about in your column how major US cities emptied out during the pandemic, But aren't people coming back now? Don't you see a rejuvenation coming?
We certainly have seen a big back to the office movement, and at least in my circles, it seems like four days a week with Friday being flex Day, is sort of the new normal for corporate America. So I think that for the most part, return of the office has
now played out. And the reason I wanted to write my column is that we get new Census data in December for what migration trends look like in twenty twenty three, and that's going to capture the period between mid twenty twenty two and mid twenty twenty three when existing home sales really fell off as mortgage rates rows. And so my belief, and based on postal service data, is that
it will show that migration really tailed off. So there's a very little movement away from New York and Chicago and the West Coast, all the places that lost a lot of population during COVID, and it's not necessarily due to back to the office, but just because high mortgage rates and low home sales mean nobody's moving right now, I.
Want to get into that. But you said something about the postal service, and I think it's fascinating how they were able to track these pandemic migration trends. What was the system that they used.
So what they do is, if you ever move, you can do a change of address request and you don't have to, but a lot of people do. So it's sort of a consistent data set over time, and they look at buy zip code, the number of requests from a certain zip code and to a certain zip code.
So if you're moving from New York to Miami, maybe you'll send a request from New York or to Miami, and so that data is tracked and you can aggregate that to see sort of a pretty good way of looking at where people are leaving and moving to over time.
So they keep track of this using those change of address forms exactly.
And so we saw there was a pretty big drop off from twenty twenty one to twenty twenty two as the pandemic started to reced people went back to the office, and then we saw that in the sense of data a year ago, and then looking at the post service data we have so far this year, we've seen another big drop off as the lack of home sales and people sort of unable to move due to high mortgage rates has led to another tail off in migration.
Let's talk about that. The migration slowed as the housing market sputtered. But the conventional wisdom is that the housing market will be coming back as people return. You say, don't hold your breath, Well, I think that.
I do think housing transactions are going to pick up because life happens, and most people can't put off a move for years and years and years. And if it means eight percent mortgage rates, prices will go down, if that's what they have to do. And so you know, it might not be three months and might not be six months, but over the next two, three five years,
home sales are likely to pick up. And that means the migration patterns we saw during COVID, maybe not to the case and destinations, but from the northeast and west coast to the mountain west and south we'll pick up again.
So interstate migration and the level of existing home sales are linked.
They're connected exactly because for the most part, two thirds of households or homeowners, if you want to move, you're selling a house to buy another house. If you're moving from New York to Florida, you're probably selling a New York house to buy a Florida house. So if you're not seeing many home sales, you're not seeing much migration.
And we're talking with Bloomberg opinion columnist Connorson who tells us that the exodus from big cities isn't over yet, but it does Connor, seem like it's on pause. How long is this pause going to last?
And that's really where the housing market plays in. So I think this is important if you're in a Miami or a place like that, or you're in New York and you're saying, well, is this the new normal? Did we have a one off boom in migration during COVID, Now we got back to the office, Now this is
the new normal? And I don't think it is. I think that people this was all always set to be a decade with a lot more migration as millennials agent their family forming years and wanted more space as baby boomers were tired and maybe didn't need to live in the Midwestern Northeast anymore. And then also the ability to sort of work at least hybrid or remote some of the time makes it easier to not be in a big city, at least somewhat easier than it was before.
So I do think we're due for a big migration boom, but the housing market and mortgage rates right now are keeping that from happening.
Let's build on something you just said. Had it not been for the pandemic, that migration for lack of a better word, or the exodus from those cities may have been happening anyway because of the baby boomers, the millennials in their career Pathsah.
Yeah, we saw that migration in the late twenty tens was higher than it was in the early twenty tens, and part of it was the economy was better as well. So in the early twenty tens we were still in the aftermath of the foreclosure crisis. The labor market was pretty tough and that was holding back migration as well. So there was sort of some pent up migration from sort of lack of movement in the early twenty tens,
so it was already starting to pick up. The pandemic was kind of a one off frenzy, and I think some of that was maybe likely to be repeated. Like I don't think that Lake Tahoe will see a boom of migration going forward. That might have been a remote work thing, but certainly there's places with cheaper housing and now more jobs as companies are trying to spread out where their jobs are nationally, that kind of migration is going to come back.
But what about rising interest rates? Would that be enough to slow them?
It certainly is for now, and the question is how long is that going to persist. Most people think that existing home sales are going to be very low next year. I think they're going to pick up. We're seeing that housing inventory is sort of starting to rise at an unseasonable time of the year, and I think part of that is just because people decided not to sell their homes eighteen months ago and sort of the life changed.
Reasons for movement your deaths, divorces, babies, all that, those are still happening, and maybe you put off the move for a year eighteen months, but you probably can't do it for three or five years, and so I do think we're going to see more inventory like next year, and more inventory is going to lead to more transactions as the housing market isn't quite so inventory constrained.
Because remember last how people were selling their homes at more than the asking price, and homes would be going as soon as they're listed, or maybe they wouldn't even make it to the list at all. They would be sold just side unseen. I can give you anecdotal, an anecdote about my aunt retiring, selling her house to her neighbor who said, I've always wanted your house, I want it now, and just there it was. It was just
a quick sale. That's not happening as much now. But do you see that happening again, I mean, was last summer or one off?
Well, the wild thing is that obviously affordability is the worst it's been in forty years right now, and yet if you still talk to real estate agents, they say that there are more buyers and sellers because there's so little inventory out there. So homes that are put on the market and priced well are still moving quickly, and if they had more inventory, they would have more sales. And it doesn't mean prices would go up. I think when we think about what does the housing market need
right now, it's not higher prices. It's more inventory, more transactions, more liquidity, And the fact that we're seeing inventory rise right now suggests that we will see those sort of beneficial dynamics next year, even if it doesn't mean. I don't think we're going to see much price growth next year, but I do think we'll see more transactions.
It seems like that would be counterintuitive to an exodus. Then if the home sales are then rising, then wouldn't you want to go back into the city and go back toward where your offices are Or has that dynamic been completely changed in our own minds by what we went through with the pandemic.
Well, I think the reason why people move to New York tends to be young people moving for jobs and immigrants moving to the US, and the people leaving New York tends to be retirees and people moving out for more space. So it gets to why people move to certain places, and so sort of, if the housing market is more liquid, it lets people sell their homes and move out of the places where people tend to move away from. When the sort of that kind of pattern of migration.
So what are you looking for in the next few months? Then what should we watch for?
So I am focused most primarily on inventory because I think inventory will lead to sales and if we see that sort of flywheel kick in. And part of it too, is that if you want to move, sometimes you can't move if there isn't a home for you to buy. So if there's more inventory, not only can you find something to buy, but that late makes you able to sell as well. And if we get that flywheel dynamic of more inventory, more transactions, that I will sort of
project that migration is going to pick up again. And seeing which places are the new hotspots for migration in this sort of post COVID new normal.
Got any idea what those hot spots might be.
Too? So I think it's toughest because yeah, it's the price of movements have been so extreme, like you sell the booms busts and Boise and Austin and Miami, and so I think we need to see things settle out a little bit more until we know for sure.
Okay, thank you Connor.
Thanks.
Amy Connorson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and founder of Peachtree Creek Investments. Now coming up, we'll look at the bond between child and parent and how sometimes it might be a good eye to loosen those apron strings a bit. You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion.
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You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. You know parents are spending more time than ever with their kids. In nearly every wealthy country, the parent child together time has steadily increased, and this hyper attention might actually be harmful to children. Bloomberg Opinion columnist Alison Sriger covers economics and joins us with some insight. Now, Allison, we've heard all the stories about how gen X is the last
of the free range kids. You stay outside, you play all day, you go home before the street lights come on, you drink from the hose. I know you've heard all the stories. There is something to be said, though, for parents who do spend more time with their kids than maybe we got when we were kids. How can that be bad?
Well, in some ways, there are a lot of benefits. I mean, the evidence is somewhat mixed, but I mean there's no doubt that kids are safer, They're less likely to die in accidents and things like that. And you know, I think, you know, there is evidence that parents who can you know, who can spend more time engaging with their kids do do well for developmental reasons. But I mean, they're diminishing returns to the fact it could even be harmful.
And I think, you know, there was a recent paper that came out in the journal Pediatrics sort of suggesting that this might be one of the reasons why kids are also a lot more emotionally anxious and depressed, because you know, spending time on your own as a child is really important developmentally. It's how you develop like a sense of control over your environment. It's how you develop independence and ability to resolve conflicts. All these things are
really important to your development. And you know this this article came out and just for another my book project, I happen to be speaking to a lot of people about this already, and I was speaking to a professor at Georgetown a psychology professor, and her work says there's something called the age of release, which sounds really like you're get In fact, when I was googling it to try to find her work, I kept finding things about prison.
But this is actually a psychological term for children for when you're allowed to sort of roam free, or at least go places by your own or unsupervised. And she finds that your age of release actually is very indicative of your ability to take risks when you're older, your ability to handle setbacks. And as I said it, like the age of release, she says, is ticked up over the years, six or seven years to the point where
the age of release, you know, I don't know. I kind of had a loose parents, so I had a very early age of release, even compared to other people, even for people of my generation. Sure, but so I was like six or seven, but like now it's like fourteen.
Wow. And let's just clarify because I picked up on that in your column, the age of release, And that's sort of like when you're first allowed to go to a sleepover or maybe walk to school by yourself, or do those things that are unsupervised. That seem like a rite of passage. When you are as young as six. I think I was maybe seven or eight perhaps when that time came along, was just pretty normal. But you're saying now, it doesn't happen until they're in their teen years.
Yeah, And she was telling me how she asked her class recently, how old were you when you were allowed to play unsupervised? And they're just like, we were too old to play by the time we were unsupervised. It's just sad.
Wow, that's rough. And so the point of all of this, and the point of that article you were referencing, is that if you're not allowed to play unsupervised by a certain time, then you're missing out on that developmental gift that gives you to be able, to what reason, be comfortable in your own skin, be comfortable on your own What is it you're missing?
Well, kin, this is it. I mean at the Journal Pediatrics article talked a lot about how it might be contributing to depression and anxiety. Talking to the press or Georgetown, we are talking more about your comfort with risk taking. And her research is finding you know, she's comparing across different countries and found that like kids with later ages of release were just like more fearful and less comfortable
with risk taking. She found like over the years her Georgetown students, you know, found like she'd be like, explain the last time you were scared or you're an intense situation, and they'd describe things that used to not even register and they're more like some of them won't even leave campus, they won't take public transportation. So it ends up really having this impact on your comfort with the world and comfort with risk, you know, for the rest of your life.
Now, when these kids grow up, how will this childhood and how they spent it manifest itself in the workplace.
Well, I mean I personally, I mean it's hard to prove empirically, but I suspect it might be. Were been seeing an overall decline in risk taking for young adults, certainly, like despite all the hype and we hear about less job changing, less moving, less, lower rates of entrepreneurship, you know, on you know, all sort of things that require you
to be have some comfort with ambiguity and uncertainty. And I suspect those things might be related, like being raised with less comfort with risk and then taking less economic risk and perhaps even emotional risk. When I was doing I said the book research, you know, even like, you know, there's all these reports that young people are less likely to form relationships or even date anyway. You know, it's so much easier to meet people with apps and whatnot.
And you know a lot of surveys people said, what is your fear about dating? And they're like, it feels risky. And when I was talking to some professors about this too, they're just like they're talking about like I assume they meant risk, like emotional risk. You might get hurt, you might get rejected, and that's scary. And she was like, no, They're like, well, I could end up talking to someone
and it could feel awkward. They're like, or like this conversation stalling, or like all these very human things.
Wow, And we are talking the Bloomberg opinion columnist Allison Schreker, who who has a column on the Bloomberg Terminal about how perhaps American parents should teach their kids more about taking risks. And Alison, how is it parents are able to spend more time with their kids now compared to say, in the nineteen sixties, when not everybody was working.
It's fascinating to me, we're spending so much time with kids because they compared to the sixties. Because women were like housewives in the sixties and now most we're in the labor force. Where's this time coming from? And I mean, I suspect it's also like in the sixties they also to spend a lot more time doing housework because they didn't have the same technology. It's a big cultural shift
that we're seeing. And also it could be that, you know, people are having fewer children, they also have more money, so they just you know, I've read studies that's found like a lot of people when they're trying to delve into why people spend more time with their kids, and one of the big things that kept coming up is
people just enjoy their kids. You know, maybe in the sixties, when you had like a million chores to do to also take care of your kids, felt like not that people didn't love the kids, but it felt like this extra burden. And now that I guess we're richer and live more comfortable lives, people are just relishing time with their kids more, which is nice in a lot of ways.
And you are noticing, like you observe, people complain about this a lot and developmenttally, I don't know how healthy it is that people seem to be friends with their kids all through high school and college. It's not like when we were young, where we would just like go to college not speak to our parents for three weeks
and it's nice. I guess in some ways they're like friends with their parents and don't have this period of individuation where they barely speak to them, even though developmentally that might have some value.
The flip side of this coin, though, is that parents got to be facing a lot of pressure when it comes to being involved in their kids' lives. The pressure that the kids are feeling to be able to excel and achieve and to win and to push themselves. The parents are feeling similar pressure as well when it comes to being the best parent ever. And that's going to mean spending more time with the kids.
Yeah. I mean, you see surveys where parents are like, my kid would really benefit from more alone time, but when everyone else is and there's a lot of social shame, and also it feels like a very economically cutthroat environment. I'm actually sure that's true, but certainly that's the perception. It's amazing to me that so many parents, like every parent I know spends a lot of time with their kids on their homework. Like, my parents never got involved in my homework.
God, I don't think my parents knew what classes I was taking.
Yeah, so it's like if I wrote, if I had like a bad homework assignment and I got a bad grade, that was like my problem to bear, that's on you. Yeah, But like people like with kids, like you know, they feel like they've got to like be involved in their kids' homework, which is very time consuming and I honestly can't imagine enjoyable. But I think it is feeling like I've got to give my kid every shot. They've got to like do
as well as they can in school. And you know, whether or not that's really true, or whether or not that's really correlated with emotional well being. Like I think there's also a lot of correlation between anxiety and depression in top colleges, So I mean there's that, So I mean, maybe it's not worth it, but I think that's also part of it. Is it feels like there's this rat race and you have to give your kid every advantage, and that involves this of sort of hyper concentrated attention on them.
Bloomberg Opinion columnist Alison Schreger covers economics now coming up. Weight loss drugs are all the rage, but there are some pressing questions like how long do you have to take them? And will the weight come back when you stop? And don't forget. We're available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform. This is Bloomberg Opinion.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast coutch Us Saturdays at one and seven pm Eastern.
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This is Bloomberg Opinion. I Mami Morris. Obesity Week used to be a quiet, annual meeting of weight loss specialists and a few farmer reps, but not this year. There's a new family of weight loss drugs available, and these new drugs are changing everything. Even teenagers are interested in getting their hands on the drugs. Seventeen year old Emma Leah Zumo was part of the drug trial and found dramatic results.
I was really excited that there was a chance to help me and maybe help me lose weight and finally get.
A control on something that's been uncontrollable my whole life, and also help other girls like me.
On the other hand, doctor Veronica Johnson with Northwestern Medicine says there is also a risk of using off brand versions of these drugs.
If a patient elects to use a compounded form of the medication, we cannot guarantee what's actually in that drug.
Let's get some insight now from Bloomberg opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis, who covers biotech, healthcare and the pharmaceutical industry. Lisa, always a pleasure. We've talked about these drugs before, you and I and I have asked you before how long is a person going to have to take these drugs? And then what happens when you stop?
Right?
So you know, right now forever, it's sort of the message around you know, how long you're going to have
to take these drugs? Because the studies that were conducted to get the drugs approved, you know, they've shown they've kept some people on the drug and given people placebo after they've been on it for a year, and you can see the downward you know, curve stays the same for the people who keep on the drug, and the people who are given a placebo gain their weight back, not necessarily all of it, but most of it over
the course of the next year. So, you know, I think for long term health effects, the realistic answer is forever, but the kind of practical answer is maybe not. I think that's a thing that's been explored among doctors right now, not necessarily in clinical trials, but in the real life setting. In some cases they've had to explore it because of
the drug shortages and the cost of the drug. So many people are paying for these out of pocket that they simply can't afford them anymore and they have to stop taking them. So it's a thing that's a subject of a lot of conversation in the OPCD medicine field.
Are we also learning more now about what side effects these drugs may bring on.
I know there's some things that we're learning that are getting some media attention that we're known but as many many people take them. For example, there's a thing called gastroparesis where it's very rare, but essentially the drugs keep you feeling full in part by your stomach is actually full for longer you empty it. Takes you a lot longer to empty your stomach. Some people have their stomachs
aren't emptying, and so that can be dangerous. That's in a very rare, very very rare cases, and you want to know about that when people are on the drugs because of that, if, for example, you were in an accident and you needed to get surgery, your antithesiologist needs to know that you around these drugs because that means your stomach might be fuller than someone who hadn't eaten recently.
Other than the weight loss, obviously, what side benefits are there.
That's the thing that's kind of exciting about these drugs. We've seen studies already that companies are running dozens and dozens of trials to try to prove that there are health benefits outside of the way, And already we know with we GOV that it can lower the risk of heart disease, heart attacks, and strokes. They stopped a trial
early recently around chronic kidney disease. So I think we're just going to see more of these unfold and then that helps us, you know, to kind of form an argument around the societal cost of the drugs versus the benefits.
So we're very early into this weight loss drug stage where we are seeing that there are benefits and that there are some side effects, but that for the most part, it is doing what is supposed to do, which is help you lose weight. Is there a way to change the formula? Do you see some evolution there the dosed, the frequency to help tailor the drug to the patient.
Yeah, I think a lot of that experimenting is happening because you know, one side effect is that it makes people nauseous, you know, I mean, I think that's one that some people decide they're going to tolerate. For some people it goes away over time. Others it just doesn't and they decide like I'm just going to be minorly nauseous, or they take zofran and drug to kind of, you know,
deal with the side effect. I think doctors at this conference I was recently at that was focused on obesity, talked about can we take it intermittently once you hit your weight plateau, you know, can we take people to a lower dose. And there is one study that Lily is running that's like, you know, for a year you're on the high, you're high dose, and then we're looking at what happens when some people go to a lower dose and some people stay in the high dose, and
some people go on placebo. There's a ton of drugs that are in development that would be less frequently dosed to their pills and development. You know, we'll see how well the balance is between tolerance and weight loss and long term maintenance.
You know.
The other thing that people are trying is and you know TBD on whether it works or not, is switching people to drugs that are older like q SIMA. This is a totally different class of weightless drugs that's been around for a while. Once people hit their plateau, can they go on one of these cheaper, older drugs and
just maintain? Is that better tolerated? We know those drugs stop working after a while, but it could help curb some of the intents hunger some people feel when they stop taking these drugs.
And we're talking with Bloomberg opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis about what doctors want to know about these new weight loss drugs. What is it that doctors want to know besides how long do I have to keep my patient on these drugs? What's the consensus I think.
Most doctors who are OBC medicine specialists would tell you got to stay on the drug forever. But they know that there's like a realism that they need to embed in that conversation. So they want to know when they're talking to a who's considering these drugs, like what are the options for how we can approach them? And then what are the options for off ramping someone you know? And so right now it's a lot of trial and error,
and I think sharing information between each other. I don't think that companies have a lot of incentive to study what happens, you know, if you can take the drugs less often, So I think I think, you know, it's going to be kind of one doctor told me the art of medicine right now. I think the concern is that increasingly we're going to see primary care physicians prescribing these drugs who just aren't going to have the same kind of information right and know how to tailor them
appropriately to patients. So I think there's going to be a lot of learning in the next two to three to four years. Because this is of these rights are pretty revolutionary. We've talked about them several times before, and there's still a lot to learn because they're really shaking up medicine, and.
They're shaking up more than just medicine, aren't they Fast food, alcohol memberships, even if you're just going out to eat, the casual dining industry are all feeling the ripple effects of the popularity of these drugs.
It's really pretty astounding to watch because you know, I think we're all trying to prognosticate and understand the way that it's going to affect, you know, different industries, the way we live life. Even you know, when people go out to eat and they don't want a larger meal, you know, they can only eat small amounts. What does that mean for social life? You know, what does it
mean for the alcohol industry. We're all, I think everyone's trying to read the tea leaves and understand, but it I do think that until we really get solved the issue of insurance coverage, understanding how sustainable it is to be on these drugs for the long term, and some of the supply issues around you know, just being able
to get the drugs. Until those three things are sorted, it's going to be hard to really say here's the number, you know, here's what society looks like, you know, a world where we have you know, workable OBESD drugs.
So there is more work to be done. What do you see coming down the pipe.
Yeah, we're going to start to see some data on other drugs. We'll still we'll see more health data on the two drugs that exist. Munjara Lily's drug is currently approoved for diabetes and will be approved for OBESD by
the end of this year. But we're seeing other types of drugs where they combined the receptors that are in the current drugs with another one to try to you know, increase the weight loss, have it maybe you know, attenuate a little bit how quickly you lose the weight, but then you lose more over longer period of time.
Maybe some of the.
Drugs you might be able to take once a month or once a quarter. So there's a lot of work being done exploring you know this kind of they all act on our own natural hormone system, exploring this interplay between our brain and our gut. So you know, we're going to continue to see a lot of excitement and data out of you know, those drugs going forward. You know, the a I may called obesity a disease you know, about a decade ago. But I don't think societally we've
shifted our mindset to think of it as that. I think there's still been so much, you know, blaming the person rather than kind of it being the biology, you know. And so I do think that conversation is shifting. I've seen a shift even just in the last year in the way these drugs are covered, and so that's also a work in progress, and we'll see where it ends up.
Lisa Jarvis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering biotech, healthcare, and the pharmaceutical industry. The hottest ticket in Asia Pacific earlier this fall wasn't for a soccer match or an NBA exhibition game. People wanted tickets to the metal event debut of competitive video gaming E sports, the nineteenth Agent Games are being hailed as an unprecedented success, and there is an argument to be made about making video game
competitions an Olympic sport. We bring in Bloomberg Opinion columnist ad a Mentor who covers the business of sports, and Adam, we know the Olympics are not interested, at least not yet. But you argue that's a mistake.
Why, well, it's a huge mistake because around the world, especially in emerging markets, especially in emerging Asia, esports are arguably the most popular competitive spectator sport that's out there. By the estimation of new Zoo, which is a global esports consultancy, more than five hundred million people watch competitive esports they stream it. It's a huge, huge audience in Asia. Just as a point of comparison, during the US Open this year, there were around three and a half million
people who watched it. During the League of Legends finals, League of Legends being one of the most popular competitive video games, you had over five million. So that gives you a sense of what the audience is just to watch this stuff. Then you add in the people who are at home playing these you know, New Zoo estimates that there are probably three and a half billion competitive egame esports players out there in the world. Now, this
could be somebody with a gaming council at home. This could be somebody playing League of Legends on their laptop. Where could be you or me playing on our phone while we're talking to each other. Whatever it is, people out there are interested.
So with that interest, what is the revenue.
Well, the revenue is huge, I mean more than one hundred billion dollars from all the various revenue sources, licensing of games, competitive esports tournaments. Remember, esports tournaments have sold out places like Madison Square Garden multiple nights in a row as far back as twenty sixteen. You know, that's not on the radar screen of a lot of sports fans, people who watch the Knicks who also play at the
Madison Square Garden and don't always sell it out. But for a lot of younger people who are interested in video games, that's a big moment. Las Vegas has its own East Sports Arena in Hangzo, China, where this where the Asian Games took place. They had a custom built esports arena that can hold over five thousand people, which
is relatively small for in esports arena. If you go up to Seoul, which is I would argue the esports capital of the world, they have bigger arenas and they have multiple So when you look at all these revenue sources, it's an enormous business. The challenge for people going into it is that it's still very young and a lot of it's in emerging markets, so.
What's the Olympic Committee's beef with it? Why do they say no, they're inching ever closer to it.
I mean, they called themselves a sponsor of the Asia Games E Sports competition. But they have two big issues, which both of which I think can be overcome. Number one is Thomas Bach, the president of the IOC, does not like violence, and he says that if video games would have to overcome their violent legacy, they're violent present. To me, it's a little bit ridiculous considering that the roots of a lot of Olympic sports are warfare. I mean, what is the javelin? It's throwing a spear, But I'm
not the president of the International Olympic Committee. The second issue is licensing, and that's a little bit thorn near because something like Dota, League of Legends, World of Warcraft, these are very popular games over the years. They are owned by an entity, they're owned by a game publisher, and the International Olympic Committee has never really faced this before.
How do you put a sport on at the Olympics that is owned by somebody else that there's copyrights and so they'll need to figure out a way to overcome that. But clearly it's happening because the Asia Games is doing it, and I think just the reality is the growth and the money and the popularity of these games makes it increasingly ridiculous, especially in emerging markets with young people, that these aren't a part of the Olympics, and so maybe that would be the way to open the door to
this for the IOC. They're not violent, you know, for example the soccer games. You know, FIFA is a co sponsor, they work with people on these. Maybe that would be the route into the IOC eventually doing this.
Bloomberg Opinion columnist Adam Mentor covers the business of sports that does it for this week's Bloomberg Opinion. We are produced by Eric Mullow, and you can find all of these columns on the Bloomberg terminal. We're also available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform. Stay with us today's top stories and global business headlines coming up. I'm Amy Morris. This is Bloomberg