An NBA sports star has said that GTA 6 will cause sports leagues to ‘plummet’ in November since everyone will be too busy playing video games.
It’s impossible to overstate how big Grand Theft Auto 6 is going to be when it arrives in November. There’s a reason that most publishers are keen to avoid launching their games so close to it, which is why the release schedules are so packed in September and October.
Even celebrities like Millie Bobby Brown and Lewis Hamilton have publicly expressed excitement for GTA 6, with the latter saying he’ll be cancelling work plans just to play the game at launch.
More recently, NBA athlete Steven Adams mentioned GTA 6 during a press conference, saying that the game will have a detrimental effect on all professional sports once it drops. And while his statement got a bit of a chuckle from the crowd, he’s not really joking.
‘I will say, you guys should anticipate November,’ said Adams, who plays for American basketball team the Houston Rockets. ‘The performance of the league… league wide… GTA is dropping.
‘So look at NFL, look at all the leagues, and watch them, plummet, mate. Just for the month of November, performance is gonna go down.’ (Adams is from New Zealand and his dad is from Bristol, if you were wondering.)
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He added that even coaching scouts will be ‘horrendous’ but assures things will pick back up by December, once everybody has finished the game.
Considering GTA 5 is the best selling traditional video game ever made, at over 220 million sales, it’s not an exaggeration that GTA 6’s launch will be a cultural touchstone in not just video games but entertainment in general.
Based on pre-order figures alone, GTA 6 is estimated to make roughly half of GTA 5’s lifetime revenue in just a week. So, it’s perfectly believable that sports athletes everywhere will be spending every opportunity they can to play GTA 6.
The game’s popularity is also being taken advantage of for PR stunts. In August, word spread of a US army battalion using the game to encourage re-enlistment.
This wouldn’t be the first time a popular video game disrupted athletes’ performance either. Back in 2018, The Washington Post reported on how there were concerns of athletes becoming addicted to Fortnite, which was still in its infancy at the time and rapidly exploding in popularity thanks to its battle royale mode.
In other GTA 6 related news, exclusive T-shirts that were only available at the Tokyo Game Show last week have been spotted on eBay, where they are being sold for as much as £182.
The shirts in question depict the four PlayStation buttons with the GTA 6 colour scheme as part of a partnership between Sony and Rockstar. These shirts weren’t even being sold; they were free gifts for anyone who attended the GTA 6 booth at the show.
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