Swiss football fans protest esports by throwing tennis balls and controllers onto pitch

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It's all kicking off.

A Swiss Super League match between Young Boys and FC Basel over the weekend was interrupted by protests against the growing influence of esports on Swiss football teams, with fans throwing tennis balls and a PS4 controller onto the pitch.

During the protests, which held up the match for two minutes, fans from both sides also unfurled anti-esports banners, including one featuring a giant pause button (above) and one that simply said, rather pithily, "scheiss esports".

FC Basel has its own FIFA esports team. Young Boys does not but reports (summarised here on Nau.ch) suggest that league authorities are considering launching an official esports tournament in which every club would have to compete, which is likely what prompted the protests.

It happened 15 minutes into the match, while the score was still 0-0. You can see the fans throwing tennis balls and the controller onto the pitch in the clip below.

Young Boys went on to win the match 7-1.

Thanks, Eurogamer.

Samuel Horti
Samuel Horti

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.