Have you ever wondered what is esports? If you have never learned about video games, this concept will probably be very strange to you. But you won’t believe that this market is so huge and has grown globally. With millions of fans and billions of dollars to contend with in the competitive video game arena, it’s a rapidly expanding international phenomenon. Casual gamers have grown into serious stars who occasionally make seven figures and receive substantial corporate endorsements thanks to streaming services and live events.
What Is Esports?
What is Esports? The structured, competitive video game industry is known as “eSports.” In the same video games, including Fortnite, League of Legends, Counter-Strike, Call of Duty, Overwatch, and Madden NFL, players from various leagues or teams compete against one another. Millions of fans that tune in to live events, watch them on TV or follow them online keep track of these gamers. Popular gamers frequently develop their fan bases on streaming platforms like Twitch because they can watch their favorite players play in real-time.
History Of Esports
Esports evolved from a casual pastime to a regulated professional sport starting in the 1990s. Tens of millions of people watch tournaments live, and competitive professional gaming, commonly known as eSports, is currently a rapidly growing $1 billion industry. They may possibly make their Olympic debut in the near future.
The eSports sector is a modern-day gold rush, with tremendous development every year. Traditional sports leagues like the NHL and NBA have started tournaments and leagues, and owners of NBA and NFL teams have added ownership stakes in esports teams. ESPN, TBS, SyFy, and Telemundo are all significant media outlets that carry esports coverage.
This year PlayVS announced a collaboration to introduce esports to 19,500 high schools 8, and over 600 colleges and universities in the US have added varsity esports teams and/or scholarships for esports. Esports are here to stay, as the statistics make plain.
Audiences Of Esports
On the same topic as what is Esports, who is the audience of Esports? According to a report from market analysis firm Newzoo, 380 million people will watch eSports this year, including 165 million fans. The majority of these fans are from China, Korea, and North America.
Crowds watching tournaments and other events can rival those at most typical professional sports events. As one of the most-watched eSports events in history, the 2017 League of Legends World Championship drew more than 80 million viewers. A multi-year deal to broadcast the Overwatch League, a brand new worldwide league with 12 franchises centered around the hugely popular multiplayer first-person shooter, Overwatch, has been announced. announced in July by ESPN and Disney XD.
Newzoo data indicates that 588 key e-sports competitions took place in 2017.
Who Participates In Esports?
Following the topic about what is Esports? Even if it’s hard for fans of traditional sports leagues like the NFL or NBA to imagine, at the highest level, eSports does the same thing. In fact, the NBA held a panel in April to start a new eSports league, based on the basketball-themed NBA 2K video game series. 102 professional eSports players were selected in a selection with all the fanfare and rituals normally reserved for athletes on the field.
At the April 2018 NBA 2K League panel discussion, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, center, poses for a photo with the players.
Even universities joined in the fun. The National Collegiate E-Sports Association, a governing body, has approved diverse e-sports programs at more than 50 institutions. The NACE Championship awards thousands of dollars in prizes, which are used to fund the winners’ scholarships.
Esports Revenue
What is Esports? It’s a lucrative market for video game companies and developers besides players. The tournament in Jacksonville features the video game Madden 19, part of the EA Madden franchise. The EA Madden franchise has generated over $4 billion in income since its launch nearly 30 years ago by selling over 130 million units.
Like traditional athletics, eSports competitors can make a lot of money: Prize money is awarded at tournaments, which can run into the millions of dollars, often divided among members of the winning team. According to this, the best players in the world can easily make seven figures a year. Selling tickets to these competitions helps both the competing teams and the event organizers. That famous League of Legends tournament from 2017? The event brought
Sponsorships, endorsements and tournament payments are additional sources of income for players. To that end, according to Newzoo, companies will spend $694 million on eSports-related projects this year alone.
The statistics and relentless dynamics of the culture suggest that eSports will remain a growing business and entertainment for the foreseeable future. More than a fifth of the world’s population, or 1.6 billion people, will be familiar with eSports by the end of 2018.
The Biggest Esports Tournaments
As we said at the outset about what is Esports, team-based games dominate the eSports arena. While there are some single-player competitions for games like FIFA and Starcraft, they are not as popular as some of the other games out there. Also, even though Fortnite is a single-player game, you play with 99 other people so we’ll include that.
By bounty, competitor, and audience, here are the top eSports games, listed in no particular order:
- DOTA 2: 59 participating teams, top 15 million viewers, total prize money for the championship is $35 million and growing
- Fortnite: $30 million bounty, 40 million participants and 2 million viewers
- League of Legends: 44 million viewers at peak, 24 teams and 7 million dollars
- CS:GO: Over 40 teams, 1 million USD in championship prize money and 1.2 million viewers
- Overwatch: 20 teams, 5,000,000 USD and 300,000 spectators
- PUBG: 20 teams, 2 million USD and 800,000 spectators
Conclusion
Above is the basic information about what is Esports. There are many interesting things about this sport. If you are a newcomer you should do some research on it and you will be able to get yourself excited about becoming a pro.