Source: Market Watch Personal Finance
Professional competitive videogaming, known as electronic sports, or more commonly as eSports, has become a global phenomenon valued in the billions of dollars.
The eSports business, anchored by what is referred to as multiplayer online battle arena games like “League of Legends,” has been growing rapidly in recent years, buoyed by rising popularity in the U.S., though it has long been considered a major spectator sport in Asia.
The industry is in the midst of phenomenal growth, with top players racking up millions of dollars over time in prize money, streaming deals, sponsorships and merchandising.
The PC gaming market rang up $3.6 billion in revenue in 2014, according to a recent report by EEDAR. Free-to-play games, the lifeblood of eSports, accounted for $1.11 billion of that total and are expected to be the fastest-growing segment this year, rising to an estimated $1.29 billion in revenue by the end of this year.
See also: A new sports industry is blossoming online, and it’s already worth billions
Packed stadiums
ESL, the world’s biggest eSports company, has expressed confidence that it can attract larger audiences to live events, starting with the lofty goal of filling 12 traditional sports arenas in the next two years. ESL held events in four stadiums last year, two in the U.S. — at New York City’s Madison Square Garden and at San Jose’s SAP Center — and one each in Poland and Germany.
In March, ESL welcomed 104,000 visitors to its four-day world championship event, the Intel Extreme Masters, in Poland, and set a record on Twitch, the video-streaming website owned by Amazon.com Inc.
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, of more than 1 million peak concurrent streaming views across a single event.
“They are trying to build a new sports industry,” said Patrick Creadon, the director of the documentary “All Work All Play,” which is slated to premiere in North America on July 21.
Screaming fans
The biggest players have been catapulted to eSports stardom — wading into crowds of screaming fans to shake hands, sign autographs and pose for pictures.
When the U.S. team Cloud 9 was in New York City last month for the work-in-progress premiere of “All Work All Play” at the Tribeca Film Festival, members spent the good part of a day in a nearby park mingling with fans.
“It’s surreal how popular it is now,” said Daerek Hart, a 26-year-old member of U.S. eSports team Cloud 9 who goes by the pseudonym LemonNation.
Huge winnings
Prize money from competitions can run to the hundreds of thousands of dollars, but that’s just a portion of the winnings that teams and individual players can take home. Top professional players, most in their early to mid-20s, are walking away with outsized sponsorship and streaming deals.
Corporate sponsorships are expected to reach $111 million in North America this year, according to a recent report from SuperData Research.
Former “League of Legends” professional player Wei “CaoMei” Han-Dong earns more than $800,000 a year through a contract with Chinese streaming site ZhanQi TV that requires him to stream 90 hours a month.
But big money comes with intense training. Some players spend 12 or more hours a day playing videogames and have to rely on their eSports wages to cover living expenses.
Loyal fans
What makes this industry more than a fad, says Craig Levine, vice president of ESL America, is the extremely loyal fan base.
On Twitch, more than 100 million unique views are logged each month. Together, those fans rack up a collective 20 billion minutes watched on the back of more than 11 million videos broadcast per month. The Twitch app has been installed more than 23 million times.
Fans at eSports events come adorned with their favorite team’s apparel and hold signs cheering players on as though they were ar a soccer or baseball game.
At the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of “All Work All Play” in April, an elderly man stood up in front of the entire room, which was filled with players, including Cloud 9, the movie directors and producers, as well as the team at ESL, and said he was “horribly curious” about eSports. “I want to ditch this and go play,” he said.
Games designed for you
ESL Gaming has worked hard to broaden the appeal of eSports. Its broadcasters sit at “SportsCenter”-like desks as they deliver the play-by-plays, while original content is streamed almost daily through Twitch.
But Levine said ESL also believes there is room to expand to traditional television and is in “advanced discussions” with more than one major network. ESPN 2 made history in April by airing the finals of Blizzard Entertainment’s collegiate “Heroes of the Dorm” competition on TV for the first time.
Meanwhile, game developers, like “World of Warcraft” publisher Blizzard
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and “League of Legends” producer Riot Games, have doubled down on free-to-play games and now invest more time and effort in improving the viewing experience for the audience.
While sports games like Electronic Arts Inc.’s
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FIFA soccer game are also hugely popular on Twitch, one reason they haven’t reached the same levels of monetary success as eSports is that they lack a spectator mode that allows for proper broadcasting and viewing.
However, a Twitch spokesman said he thinks future iterations of sports games like EA’s FIFA and Madden NFL franchises will be designed with spectators in mind.
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Source: Market Watch Personal Finance
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