I disagree about real sports being "harder" than eSports. The skill ceiling is nearly infinitely high for eSports and sports alike. It's just a different form of skill. Just because eSports doesn't involve athleticism doesn't mean it's easier. It's like bowling, darts, or chess. Being the best at those is still incredibly hard I reckon, but still much easier because the playerbase and motivation to be the best is much smaller than real sports.

Think about a sport like tennis. The top players today would absolutely trash the top players 20 years ago. Players are getting more and more skilled as time goes on, though some of it can be attributed to equipment/training/nutrition advancements, a lot of it is because the players are simply smarter and more hardworking.

The same thing is happening in eSports. There may not be athleticism but there's a constant increase in skill as time goes on. As more and more people get into eSports, there's a lot more higher skilled individuals making it to the top. At this point it's nearly impossible to rise to the top of gameplay in an eSport without dedicating yourself fully to it.

I do agree that eSports will never take over ESPN though, because professional gaming is totally not an interest to most people. The thing about eSports also is that there's a learning curve. I can't watch games like LoL or DOTA2 because I can't tell what the hell is going on. With sports you can pretty easily tell what's going on. For instance, with American football, I don't know like any of the rules. But still I can get a sense of what's going on and I can still admire someone going beast mode out on the field. The same can't really said about eSports without knowing a lot of context.

I think there's also a huge social stigma with eSports which will also contributes to it never taking over ESPN. Real athletes for sports are people we admire whereas pro gamers are just nerds who play way too many video games. They're very often pretty physically ugly (the truth!) compared to professional athletes who are the opposite. Just think of Roger Federer and how many ads you've seen him model in. I just can't imagine the same happenining for some top gamer...