Supercell Announces $250K Brawl Stars World Championship for South Korea
2K Games and ESL Partner for $145K NBA 2K20 Global Championship
Streaming Network VENN Raises $17M in Funding Round Led by BITKRAFT
Gears 5 2019-20 Season to Feature $2M+ in Prizing
BLAST Premier CS: GO Series Announced for 2020 with $4.25M Prize Pool
Nike Showcases League of Legends Team Uniforms, Intel Brings Esports to Tokyo Olympics
Nissan Shares Car-Inspired Gaming Chair Concepts on Social Media
NetEase Plans $710M Esports Park in Shanghai
The Development of Esports Seems Unstoppable
Hi, dear readers. Look at all these inspiring news titles. Please pay attention to how big the prize pool of the Esports Championship is, how enthusiastic investors are and how closely the Esports industry connected with traditional industries. And these randomly picked pieces of news are only a tiny part of the whole news that recently happened in Esports world.
What is Esports
Esports (also known as electronic sports, e-sports, or eSports) according to Wikipedia is a form of competition using video games. Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, individually or as teams.
A video about Esports
Most of you may hear of the Esports some times, even some of you are an amateur or a professional Esports player. But according to my own experience, 80% of the people around me have no clear and detail image of the Esports in their mind. This may also indicate that the Esports industry will have a promising future for there are still a lot of potential participants not covered by the Esports yet. So for now, I will show you a youtube video, and in this video, it will tell you 15 things that you might don’t know about The eSports Industry.
How Goldman Sachs Say:
Then we take a look at how the investment banking giant says about Esports industry. “From Wild West to Mainstream” is the title of a research report issued by Goldman Sachs on 12 October 2018. According to this report:
- By 2022, we estimate the eSports audience will reach 276mn, similar in size to the NFL today.
- We expect total eSports monetization will reach $3bn by 2022.
- By 2022, we model eSports industry advertising revenue of $429mn (25% 5-year CAGR), tipping revenue of $372mn (24% 5-year CAGR), and sponsorship revenue of $1.1bn (34% 5-year CAGR).
- In 2022, we expect media rights to reach40% of total eSports revenue, comparable to the average of the four major Western sports leagues today.
- After media rights, we expect sponsorship will become the second-largest contributor of revenue, at 35% of the total in 2022.
- But we believe that continued progress in the establishment of eSports structured leagues, reinforced by continued double-digit y/y audience growth, will drive sponsorship revenue growth to over $1bn by 2022, at which point we expect the eSports audience will reach 275mn, comparable to what the NFL has today
- China is the Largest eSports market in the world and the industry in China is expected to grow at 23% CAGR during 2017-22E according to Frost & Sullivan.
Opportunities
So what are the opportunities for us to cut a slice of the pie?
- As a professional gamer, your income will usually come from salary, bonus, live streaming tipping, Advertising endorsement, and commission from selling game-related products and so on. (The highest overall esports salary is currently $ 3,626,277.75, earned by Kuro Takhasomi, a Dota 2 player. https://info.jkcp.com › blog › professional-gamer-salary-esports)
- Find a job in the industry. For the industry is booming now, huge amounts of capital are rushing into the industry. This will usually increase the demand for the talents in a very short time and keep high demand in many years while the supply of the talents will not change significantly. Under this condition, if you find a job in the Esports industry, you might get a salary which is much higher than the average salary of the same position in the city you work in.
- As a game developer, the competition in this area is so fierce. It is not easy to make a success in this area as a start-up but there are always some companies that can stand out and cut a share.
- As an investor, if you are rich, or even you are not rich but have strong faith in this industry(maybe borrow money from banks), you can also make investments in the industry. A lot of stars and celebrities have already made their moves. Such as Tony Robbins who is Famed for his effervescent motivational speeches and philanthropy, Tony Robbins and basketball legend Magic Johnson teamed up to start a company called aXiomatic. They’re now owners of the Team Liquid franchise.
- As Esports live-streamer, this is also a very new and promising work to do. Some of the Esports live-streamers have millions of fans and earn millions a year.
The opportunity I mentioned above is just some common options. Don’t set limitations on your imaginations about the industry and let us see what will truly happen in the Esports World.
At last, if you want to know more about Esports, the industry, and players, then I highly recommend you to watch this documentary named “OG’s comeback to win DOTA 2’s TI8 | Against The Odds”.
Sources:
https://www.esportsbets.com/news/celebrities-invest-in-esports/
https://36kr.com/p/5161285
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esports
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/27/us/esports-what-is-video-game-professional-league-madden-trnd/index.html
I’ve made TI9-themed wallpaper, hope you will like it from DotA2
Hi Zikang,
Interest article you wrote there. But I wanna give a downside to the rise of the esports industry. As you mention the industry is rising and everything is getting more and more. More people watching, more people playing, more money involved, etc. However, there are still issues within esport communities. An example would be this article:
https://www.hltv.org/news/27752/cr4zy-ceo-we-accumulated-around-20000-of-debt-towards-former-players-this-is-my-public-apology-to-them
The players are not getting paid according to this article. You can find tons of these articles where players are not getting paid by there organization. Esports is a rising business, but a lot of organisations step into these business without having the knowledge or capabilities to succesfully manage it.
There is another interesting article which mentiones the issues withint the esports business. You can read it when interested, but my point is that I acknowledge the rise within the esports, but I’m also worried of the bubble that comes with it.
https://www.hltv.org/news/27752/cr4zy-ceo-we-accumulated-around-20000-of-debt-towards-former-players-this-is-my-public-apology-to-them
Very interesting post. It is no denying that eSports is not going anywhere, and the industry is indeed huge and only growing.
However, I wonder a little about the title you chose. It claims that eSports is going ‘mainstream’, and that is exactly what I’m questioning. ‘Mainstream’, to my understanding, means that something is the normal way of doing things, done by regular people. I hear this quite often, the idea that eSports will have a mainstream appeal to people. This would imply, however, that it will be shown regularly next to sports like football or tennis by people who are watching those sports right now.
Esports, though, falls into a quite different category. Since the beginning, it has drawn the eyes from people who were not watching much sports to begin with, but starting do so with eSports. In other words, the target audience is totally different and has a very niche appeal. I would argue that this will not change in the future. The people who are watching eSports now will continue to do so, and people who are not interested in video games will never be interested.
This is not to say that esports is not big: let’s compare it to a sport like cricket. Cricket has a huge fanbase, and millions of people around the world are interested in it. However, only to a certain audience: mainly inhabitants of the former British empire. Dutch people are not likely to watch cricket. So I would not say that cricket is mainstream, though a sport like football IS mainstream, since it is watched around the world. So, in conclusion, like cricket, eSports is not mainstream and will not become mainstream.
Very informative article!
The Overwath League is also another interesting development in eSports. They way they have it set up mimics other sports associations in the US like the NFL or NBA. With regional city teams and a roster of contracted players, they can offer salaries, benefits and merchandising opportunities exactly like physical sports do. You can read more about it here https://overwatchleague.com/en-gb/.