Here is a fun fact for the skeptics of e-sports. With more than 40,000 people watching e-sports live and millions watching it online, e-sports is bigger than basketball! Rather than being a supplement to the personal gaming experience, the e-sports market has emerged as a spectator sport. This explains why the market analysts at Technavio predict the global e-sports market to record a CAGR of whooping 32% by the year 2021.
The immense popularity of social media platforms, along with sophisticated technologies have given birth to the immersive gaming experience. The popularity of e-sports has grown to the extent that, many view it as property, rather than just a medium of personal entertainment. This magnitude of the popularity of e-sports brings us to the important question: What exactly is driving the global e-sports market?
After in-depth research and market study, industry experts have zeroed on the following five factors as the driving force of the e-sports market at the global level.
Better infrastructure
Until recently the e-sports market lacked the adequate set-up. But as the sport has gained popularity with the masses, the investments in e-sports infrastructure has grown immensely. For instance, this year a 15,000 square feet e-sports arena opened in Las Vegas. Given its popularity with the millennial population, market analysts expect the number of e-sports arena to shoot up in the upcoming years as well. Especially countries like Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore are all set to witness huge investments in building sleek e-sports infrastructure.
Popularity of mobile devices for e-sports
One major challenge for developers has been the low penetration of consoles and PCs throughout the globe. And given the fact that the penetration of mobile devices is far greater, especially in the developing economies, there has been an increase in some mobile version of e-games. This driver is particularly evident in China, which has already organized tournaments for 24 of the top 100 Android games. Mobile apps like Mob-Crush, YouTube, and Twitch has further boosted the popularity of e-sports.
Technological innovations
There is no denying the fact that technological innovations have been a major reason behind the immense popularity of e-sports. Gone are the days when video games were played on TV, and the quality of graphics was quite low. With better hardware and software, the gaming fraternity is now enjoying graphically advanced and move realistic presentation of games. Apart from Nintendo Switch which was launched this year, the FIFA series, Call of Duty series, and the Medal of Honor series are a few examples of games with amazing graphics.
Emergence of female championships
Even though e-sports was expected to remove the gender divide in the gaming fraternity, it was noticed that females were not actively involved in online gaming. Keeping this fact in mind, several developers have designed games which are not only interesting for female gamers but also present the female characters as equally strong and important as the male ones. Also, with the launch of female championships, it is expected that the popularity of e-sports will grow at a faster rate. After all, no major growth can be expected with more than half of the population not being actively involved in the drive.
Growth in number of generalist sponsors
The number of generalist sponsors is a major yardstick to measure the popularity of any sport. Until recently most sponsors have been from the gaming world, but recently there has been an increase in the number of generalists sponsors as well. For instance, Valve, Intel, and Turtle Beach are the usual sponsors of e-sports. But now generalist sponsors like the American Express, and Coco-Cola have also shown interest in the e-sports tournaments. This surely is a sign of increased credibility of e-sports tournaments.
Though piracy of the digital content along with betting regulations in Asian countries have been a major concern for several vendors – the market for e-sports is all geared to grow at an immense pace.
Get more information about the Global E-Sports Market
