eSports by numbers
Moving away from traditional sports I’ve covered in the past, I’ve decided to start writing about eSports.
There’s the debate by many on how playing video games can be a sport (might be a topic for another day) but the sheer adoption and size proves how big it’s got and the numbers don’t lie.
Titles such as Dota 2 and Fortnite have really gained global attention, the former offering a whopping $41.26m prize pool and the latter paying out nearly $20m (some industry commentators have predicted that the shoot ’em up’s prize fund will quadruple this year!)
The prize money is one aspect that has certainly attracted the masses of hardcore gamers. Data collected by Statista shows that eSports global awareness back in 2015 was 809 million, in contrast, by the end of 2019 the sport’s awareness will increase to 1.57 billion. That’s a total increase of 761 million people gaining awareness of the global sport.
As well as awareness and adoption, we’ve seen eSports players train longer hours. According to The Esports Observer, South Korean gamer Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok trains 12–15 hours a day! Moreover, two former League of Legends players claimed they played similar hours to Sang-hyeok whilst their other team mates only played around 8 hours respectively.
Watching these well trained and world class eSports stars has attracted 258 million unique global visitors (in 2018) according to data from research firm SuperData.
To get a real understanding of that stat, the NFL saw 204 million unique visitors in 2016 to watch the regular season according to Nielsen data.
Finally, I thought I’d leave some eSports stats from China, an important market for the industry.
Starting with the actual gaming market, China represents 31.1% of the global games market in terms of revenue. In addition, they have the most gamers worldwide. It’s estimated that they have over 680 million gamers and that number will rise to over 870 million by 2023.
What’s particularly interesting about China is that more than half of the country’s gamers are eSports enthusiasts. Furthermore, The Red Dragon has seen a significant rise in eSports players. In 2015, China had 19.4% rise in players, by 2018 the number rose to 51%.
It can be said that the Chinese version of Twitch, Douyu has helped eSports grow. The live-sharing service has over 380,000 streamers that are with talent agencies and the most popular games that are shown include: League of Legends, DOTA2, NBA 2K series, FIFA, Fortnite, and Warcraft.
Gaming viewers in China are predicted to expected to reach 400 million by 2023.
Which of the chosen eSports stats has stood out for you? Tweet me your fave with the hashtag #eSportsStats.
