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. Diarmuid Early competes in the Microsoft Excel World ChampionshipEarly, who runs his own data science consultancy firm in New York, does this for the enjoyment rather than the prize money. Among his friends in the US and the competitive Excel community, Diarmuid is known as “Dim”.

Source: The Irish Times January 22, 2026 09:31 UTC