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Spreadsheet superheroes (you know, those people in the office whom everyone turns to when they’re confounded by Excel) have come into their own. The Microsoft Excel World Championship transforms a common office tool into a cutthroat sport, bringing together a global community of enthusiasts to compete, learn and celebrate the power of Excel.
And you heard it here first.
While the event actually launched in 2021, it has been building every year. Now, its biggest championship is staged inside the 30,000-square-foot HyperX Esports Arena right on the Strip and in the words of one esports reporter, it has taken its cue from WWE:
“While the championship has experimented with wrestler-style intros before, in which competitors run down a tunnel to a smattering of muted applause from the Las Vegas crowd, this year, they've gone full "Let's get ready to ruuuuuuumbblllleeeeeee."
"I feel like we need to get more pumped up in here" screamed one of the hosts mid-way through a competitor intro sequence, her voice audibly breaking with excitement. "From the United States of America," the other interjects. "Let's give it up for... Peeeeeter Scharl!"
Enter Scharl, merrily running down a neon lit tunnel holding a sign saying, "I love to merge cells". The crowd boos, because, according to my data-science-au-fait partner, merging cells breaks a lot of Excel functions.”
Oh, and by the way, the winner gets a belt, reminiscent of what luminaries like John Cena and The Rock have hoisted through the years.
According to the BBC, competitive Excel “is essentially a puzzle-solving competition, thinking logically about how you can create a general solution to a question which is scalable and fast.”
The competition is open to everyone, everywhere. It has a series of Qualification Rounds followed by Online Playoff Rounds, followed by the Live finals in Las Vegas. (The rules can be found here.)
Each round of the competition involves one case consisting of a range of problem-solving questions solvable with Microsoft Excel. Further points:
- Each case will include several questions that the participants will have to provide answers for.
- The complexity of the questions will vary, with more complex questions awarding more points if answered correctly.
- All the questions will be formulated in such a way as to provide fully automated objective grading.
- It is expected that the question format will be “number type-in” or “text type-in”. The organizers reserve an option to use other question formats if deemed necessary.
- No answers will be in the form of an essay.
Additionally, the cases will be varied in topics; however, all cases will be solvable by a general MS Excel user. Solving the cases will require knowledge of Excel functions, data management skills and logical thinking. The cases will test participant’s abilities to use MS Excel techniques to solve out-of-the-box problems. The cases will not require specific knowledge of finance, engineering, statistics or other scientific disciplines.
Here's a quick YouTube video that discusses the sport.
A 2023 article in The Verge notes, “One case from last year’s competition required each player to figure out all the possible outcomes and associated rewards for a slot machine; another required modeling how a videogame character might navigate through an Excel-based level. A lot of cases involve chess, elections or random-character generators of some kind. In every case, the contestants have 30 minutes to answer a series of questions worth up to 1,000 points. Most points wins.”
You can also check out the World Rankings for competitors at this link.
And by the way, contestants are vying, throughout all rounds of competition, for a chance to represent their home country in Vegas. There’s money involved too: Last year, it was $60,000.
And it’s (wait for it) televised. On ESPN, no less. According to The Verge, in 2025, the event was televised as part of ESPN’s annual “The Ocho” event.
The Verge adds, “The Ocho is an ESPN event designed to show off otherwise un-televised sports. Excel is on the docket alongside Slippery Stairs, the Pillow Fight Championship and competitions in everything from belt-sanding to sign spinning — but it’s still a big deal. When competitive Excel showed up on the network last year, the sport found a whole new audience. More than 800,000 people have since watched the full 2.5-hour competition on YouTube (ESPN showed a 30-minute edit of the battle), and the folks who started the World Championship say it changed the event’s trajectory forever.”
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