Why Professional Athletes Struggle with Gaming Addictions
By Movieguide® Contributor
As gaming has become more mainstream, many professional athletes have taken up the pastime, finding themselves addicted, and it is affecting their performance.
While athletes and gamers have traditionally been viewed as polar opposites, that is no longer the case. Even the biggest athletes in the world, like Lebron James, engage in video games, often to an unhealthy extent. In October, James revealed he is a top 100 player in Madden NFL 25, a game with millions of devoted players. Many other athletes have expressed similar skills across a variety of games, revealing just how widespread the interest is.
“Devon Booker, KD, all those guys are playing Call of Duty. I think Luka [Dončić] is like a diamond or platinum [rank] in Overwatch. I know that Robin and Brook Lopez play Overwatch also,” NBA star Channing Frye told CNN. “So I would say 75% of guys [in the NBA] play video games.”
READ MORE: JUST HOW SUSCEPTIBLE ARE TEENS TO GAMING ADDICTION?
Cam Adair, founder of Game Quitters, a support group for those with a gaming addiction, recalls a time when an NFL player lost tens of millions of dollars because he was focusing on video games rather than football.
“This player was a rising star, really coming on, and was due for a huge, multi-year contract,” Adair told CNN. “And his manager called me because he was quite concerned about the amount of gaming he was doing. It wasn’t necessarily, yet, affecting his play on the field, but the manager was a little bit concerned about the way it was affecting his downtime.”
“This player, his performance started to decline and injuries started to pile up, and actually, he didn’t get that multi-year deal,” he continued. “At the time, that deal would have been worth about $14 million a year on a multi-year deal. [Gaming] didn’t keep him from playing in the NFL, but this is like, tens of millions of dollars left on the table.”
Of course, this problem does not only affect professional athletes but is a major concern for college coaches as well, especially as their players also have to balance school life on top of their sport. Having even less free time, it is concerning when precious hours are sucked away by video games.
READ MORE: HOW A COLLEGE FOOTBALL VIDEO GAME IS AFFECTING REAL-LIFE ATHLETES
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