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Life imitates Art

Looking over sports section of a local newspaper I was surprised to see a headline promoting the "EA Sports Cup". "Has E-Sports become sufficiently mainstream already that it now features in the regular sports pages", I wondered.

No, the truth is at once more mundane and more radical. It appears that Electronic Arts are now the main sponsors of the League of Ireland Soccer cup. The league of Ireland is only semi professional and I am sure this is  nickel and dime sponsorship compared to the billionaire spending of Europe's major soccer leagues but it is a very interesting development. The bills for a real world sporting activity are now being paid for by its virtual world simulacrum.

While the relationship is quite obvious and natural this still seems like a strange inversion to me suggesting that the representation has somehow become more powerful than the thing it represents.

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