Once mainly associated with hardcore players (who were stereotypically thought to live in their parent’s basement) of games like World of Warcraft, esports and e-gaming is now a billion-dollar-plus industry with people all over the world playing and watching. With forecasts that the global esports market will exceed $1.5 billion in revenue by 2022, especially due to advances in smartphone technologies with faster internet connections and more sophisticated mobile games, e-gaming is becoming accessible to all gamers no matter location, demographic or socioeconomic status.
As companies like Apple and Google work tirelessly to turn out new smartphones all the time, internet service providers are also upgrading their 5G towers for stronger, faster connections. These upgrades mean gamers can seamlessly buy and play the newest games immediately, wherever they are and without the need for an actual console. With more and more gamers turning to esports and e-gaming, it is no wonder that more than 80% of games sales have shifted to online channels to keep up.
This expansion of access, combined with the social component that the esports and e-gaming community provides, coupled with the Covid-19 pandemic placed the industry in a perfect environment to explode. People were stuck at home with only their phones, could not socialize in person and had a whole lot of free time to kill. With industry engagement up during the pandemic, I believe that as things go back to “normal,” people most likely will not revert to prior behaviors.
As worldwide mobile penetration increases and e-gaming platforms become more user-friendly for casual participants, global growth will not abate. NewZoo estimates that 2.8 billion global gamers (paywall), more than 30% of the world’s population, will lift games market income overall to $189.3 billion, with markets such as China and Southeast Asia driving much of the revenue growth. A tangible example of this audience scale is the recent ONE Esports Singapore Dota 2 Major in which a single event saw more than 274 million video views with more than 1 million peak concurrent viewers watching the streams.
CREDIT: This article originally appeared in FORBES on July 2021.