Like football players taking to the field in a large stadium, the 12 finalists ran through a lighted tunnel, some wearing sponsored t-shirts. As a narrator announced the performances and cameras captured their every move, they approached a neon-lit stage to deafening applause.
Then the men sat down at desktop computers, opened their Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, and began typing.
Excel, a program that performs complex calculations on behalf of humans, is often rightly associated with corporate boredom. But last month, at a Las Vegas esports arena that typically hosts Fortnite and League of Legends tournaments, spreadsheet-savvy finance professionals were treated like minor celebrities as they gathered to solve complex Excel puzzles in front of an audience. of around 400 people, plus more viewers watching a live broadcast on ESPN3.
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Organizers call the event the Microsoft Excel World Championship. “Yes, this is a thing,” says the official website.
At stake was a $5,000 prize, a wrestling-style championship belt and the title of best spreadsheet expert in the world. But the organizer, Andrew Grigolyunovich, dreams even bigger. He hopes to turn competitive Excel into a popular sport where professionals compete for million-dollar prizes and big-league glory.
“Excel has always been seen as a back-office product,” said Grigolyunovich, a Sudoku champion from Latvia. But in Las Vegas, “these people who are working, I don’t want to say boring jobs — but, you know, normal jobs — they could become stars.”
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If that sounds too ambitious, we’d like to introduce you to Erik Oehm, a software developer from San Francisco who watched the action from the front row.
“This is the Super Bowl for Excel nerds,” Oehm said. “If Excel is the center of your universe, that’s like hanging out with LeBron James and Kobe Bryant.”
The “LeBron James of Excel”, as he was presented in Las Vegas, was Diarmuid Early, 39, an Irish financial consultant who lives in New York, entered the arena in jeans, sandals and a T-shirt with a print that resembled abdominal muscles. The Kobe Bryant was Andrew Ngai, 37, a soft-spoken Australian actuary known as the Annihilator, who began the world championships as the defending three-time champion.
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“We’re friends — for now,” Early joked as they posed for a photo. But his anxiety was visible.
“I probably take it too seriously,” he said. “I’m very into it.”
The format of the finals was a simulation of World of Warcraft, an online role-playing game. It required the 12 men (this geek event was mostly a guy thing) to design Excel formulas to track 20 avatars and their vitals. If that sounds incomprehensibly complicated, it was: players were given a seven-page instruction manual.
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To prepare, Early adjusted the width of his Excel columns with the precision of a point guard positioning himself for a 3-point shot. Ngai prepared a “focus music” compilation on YouTube.
After a narrator kicked off the 40-minute event — “Five, four, three, two, one, and Excel!” — the 12 players leaned over their keyboards and began entering formulas. One example: “=CountChar(Lower(D5),”W”)” allowed a contestant, Michael Jarman, to discover how many times the letter “W” appeared on a spreadsheet.
The objective was to score as many points as possible while staying ahead of the eliminations. As cascading responses filled Excel columns, Ngai took a wide lead, eliciting audible gasps. Then he got stuck in a problem, just like Early. Jarman advanced as the two leaders desperately tried to solve the problem.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” Oehm sang.
“Well, that’s ridiculous”
The first electronic spreadsheet was VisiCalc, an “electronic blackboard” that automated pen and paper calculations. Microsoft released Excel in 1985. The company claims that its office software suite, which includes Excel, has more than 400 million users. (Google has said that more than 3 billion people use its free suite of products, including Gmail and a spreadsheet program called Sheets.)
Part of the appeal, and intimidation factor, of worksheets is their elusive purpose. Excel can be a meeting organizer or a tool for compiling a country’s coronavirus caseload, for example.
Speaking in almost philosophical terms, Bob Frankston, one of the founders of VisiCalc, said that people who treat Excel as just a financial tool ignore its enormous potential. “They don’t realize it’s a mirror” of their minds, he said. “The financial planning tool they are seeing is in their heads.”
But for millions of people, it’s still just a tool to accomplish the tasks their bosses assign them. This may say something about our times, that the instruments of our servitude are also the basis of our games.
The first Excel competition, ModelOff, began in 2012. But ModelOff, which had financial problems that took hours to solve, wasn’t designed with emotion in mind.
When ModelOff was discontinued after seven years, Grigolyunovich, a former competitor, created the Financial Modeling World Cup, the organization that runs the Excel championship and other events. The championship — which has several corporate sponsors, including Microsoft — was held in person for the first time last year. He said its shortened rounds, eliminations, commentators and pre-game tunnel were designed to increase tension and attract spectators.
“I remember thinking, ‘Well, this is ridiculous, why do we have this?’” said Jarman, 30, a British financial consultant who lives in Toronto, referring to the tunnel. “But it’s all in good fun. And if other esports do it, so should we.”
Grigolyunovich said his vision for future tournaments includes more spectators, bigger sponsors and a $1 million prize for the winner. For now, many fans learn about Excel’s championship through ESPN’s annual obscure sports showcase, where it is interspersed between competitions like speed chess and the World Dog Surfing Championship.
Reluctant rivals
Competitors in Las Vegas said winning requires not just knowledge of Excel, but also problem-solving skills, composure under pressure and intuition — or luck. Add the frisson of a live crowd, they say, and the competition begins to resemble a sport in its unpredictability, if not its physicality.
They seemed less interested in Grigolyunovich’s visions of fame and fortune, and more focused on adapting to the transformation of their stable, niche hobby into a televised spectacle. Mostly, they came to have fun with other Excel enthusiasts. Between rounds, they attended spreadsheet workshops and connected on LinkedIn.
More rivalries might help create some excitement, several contestants said — but they were too polite and on too friendly terms with each other to initiate any.
“Basically, everything they do to make it more fun for the spectators makes it more traumatic for the contestants,” Early said.
There was a bit of glamor in the air, however, as Early and Ngai, the LeBron and Kobe of Excel, fielded a flood of selfie requests.
“This guy is amazing,” one semifinalist, Joy Hezekiah Andriamalala, a finance student from Madagascar, told a reporter after taking a photo with Ngai. “Do you know him? Personally?”
Ngai, who seemed resigned to the possibility of losing his title streak, admitted that being a minor celebrity for a few days was “pretty cool.” He said he started treating competitive Excel more like a sport than a hobby, setting aside more time to practice.
On stage, the leaders tried to stop Jarman from taking the championship belt. Early won a semi-final round by transforming maze screens made of colored cells and emojis into numbers. In the final, Ngai tried a risky move: filling his remaining cells with random numbers.
As the clock counted down to zero, Jarman turned to face the leaderboard.
“Ten seconds, will something happen?” shouted one commentator, Oz du Soleil. Nothing happened.
Jarman jumped from his chair and threw his hands into the air, his face glistening with sweat. The crowd exploded in applause. “Look at this! Look at this!” shouted du Soleil.
Jarman held up his championship belt as someone poured glitter on his head. Oehm let out a breath he had been holding.
“You would never see this with Google Sheets,” he said. “You would never have that level of passion.”
c.2024 The New York Times Company
