“People cheer, they go crazy. It’s amazing, it’s energising,” says Irishman Diarmuid Early of his recent Excel world championship win in the Hyper X Arena in Las Vegas.
The sport involves a lot of crunching, not of bones or abs, but of numbers on an Excel spreadsheet.
It is described by the BBC as the fastest growing e-sport, and the Galway man took home the Microsoft Excel World Championship belt and $5,000 prize in December.
More than 150,000 people watched, many online, but it was the in-person audience that added to the intensity. “It’s a very full-on experience,” he says.
Challenges include maze navigation through coloured cells and columns, desert-island survival optimisation and this year’s final, origami,…