{"id":27729,"date":"2017-06-05T15:25:36","date_gmt":"2017-06-05T13:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sotrender.com\/blog\/?p=27729\/"},"modified":"2018-02-07T16:40:55","modified_gmt":"2018-02-07T15:40:55","slug":"esports-are-they-here-to-stay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sotrender.com\/blog\/2017\/06\/esports-are-they-here-to-stay\/","title":{"rendered":"eSports: Are they here to stay?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When mentioning <strong>eSports<\/strong>, a lot of people can\u2019t really identify with the concept or idea behind a spectator sport based on people watching others play a game on a computer or console like the PS4 or Xbox One. Many people also still consider gamers as <strong>lazy people sitting in their basements<\/strong> in front of their screens in the dark for <strong>hours<\/strong>. After reviewing many news segments online, it was obvious that some people are <strong>not going to accept that eSports\u00a0are growing<\/strong>. These people don\u2019t expect to see something like the pictures and video below where people gather in huge arenas to watch games being played in <strong>real-time<\/strong> by their favorite teams but eSports is getting huge advantages from social media engagement. We analyzed some of the biggest <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sotrender.com\/blog\/2017\/06\/6-lessons-learned-from-esports-brands-on-social-media\/\">eSports organizations and brands on social media<\/a> in our new post!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/G5eJyXPf30k\" width=\"853\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>From another aspect though, a lot of previous professional athletes are buying into the eSports scene. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Rick Fox<\/span>, the ex-NBA player for example has invested heavily over the past years into <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">League of Legends<\/span>\u00a0otherwise known as LoL (one of the biggest Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games) after gaining interest through his son Kyle who was a big fan and a player of LoL. This eventually culminated into the creation of Echo Fox, a <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">professional eSports organization<\/span>\u00a0which owns and manages teams playing LoL, <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Call of Duty<\/span>, <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Counter-Strike: Global Offensive<\/span>\u00a0(CS:GO) and others.<\/p>\n<p>With the increase of fans and followers <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">worldwide<\/span>, teams have transitioned from being singular game teams with small memberships to large organizations crossing gaming platforms and having multiple rosters (list of players in a given game or competition also known as team line-up) alternating. These teams have large online media campaigns, content creators, owners, managers and even <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">cooks<\/span>, <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">personal trainers<\/span>\u00a0and <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">psychologists<\/span>\u00a0to help them reach their optimum performance.<\/p>\n<p>In more recent years, <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">team houses<\/span>\u00a0have been used to train and create camps for the teams to get to know each other much better and ensure that their chemistry is there to ensure good teamwork. Teams are publishing content from games as well as content affiliated with gaming or with other users who tailor content to them. Two examples can be seen below for the top posts in the last three months for two teams representing affiliated created content and original gameplay content.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; overflow: hidden;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Ffnatic%2Fvideos%2F1431615766859419%2F&amp;show_text=1&amp;width=560\" width=\"560\" height=\"587\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; overflow: hidden;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FEvilGeniuses%2Fvideos%2F10154551393258099%2F&amp;show_text=1&amp;width=560\" width=\"560\" height=\"421\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Other teams such as <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">WestHam<\/span>\u00a0Football Club started investing in eSports last year according to a report by the <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/028f2234-5cab-11e6-bb77-a121aa8abd95\">Financial Times<\/a><\/span>. This investment came in the form of signing player Sean Allen, an EA Sports Fifa player to the team. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">EA Sports Fifa<\/span>\u00a0is the virtual version of football in which players can pick a \u00a0team either from a club or an international country and play against each other or a computer; it is usually single players going against each other but can also be done in teams of two.<\/p>\n<p>Other teams such as <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Manchester City<\/span>\u00a0are following suit as this is an extra channel for them to connect with fans worldwide as well; hence noticing and acknowledging the vital role eSports is playing in transforming the sports scene as a whole. This was later followed by <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">ESPN<\/span>\u00a0and <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Yahoo<\/span>\u00a0launching eSports channels on their websites as well after adapting to the looming reality of eSports dominance in the competitive sports scene.<\/p>\n<p>Other advancements and huge investments could be seen through the purchase of <a href=\"http:\/\/twitchadvertising.tv\/audience\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Twitch.tv<\/span><\/a>, the online streaming network, in 2014 for $1 billion by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/amazon-buys-twitch-2014-8?IR=T\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Amazon<\/span><\/a>. The main competitor of Twitch, <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">YouTube<\/span>, launched <a href=\"https:\/\/gaming.youtube.com\/games\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">YouTube Gaming<\/span>\u00a0<\/a>in 2015 in order to try to stay on par with the growing interest in watching eSports events online as well as the growing popularity of streamers. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Streamers<\/span>\u00a0in a nutshell are people who broadcast their gameplays online to an audience using platforms such as Twitch or YouTube Gaming.<\/p>\n<p><!--HubSpot Call-to-Action Code --><span id=\"hs-cta-wrapper-2d3fed96-64cc-4629-afbe-1141517fa323\" class=\"hs-cta-wrapper\"><span id=\"hs-cta-2d3fed96-64cc-4629-afbe-1141517fa323\" class=\"hs-cta-node hs-cta-2d3fed96-64cc-4629-afbe-1141517fa323\"><!-- [if lte IE 8]>\n\n\n<div id=\"hs-cta-ie-element\"><\/div>\n\n\n<![endif]--><a href=\"https:\/\/cta-redirect.hubspot.com\/cta\/redirect\/3842881\/2d3fed96-64cc-4629-afbe-1141517fa323\"><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"hs-cta-img-2d3fed96-64cc-4629-afbe-1141517fa323\" class=\"hs-cta-img aligncenter\" style=\"border-width: 0px;\" src=\"https:\/\/no-cache.hubspot.com\/cta\/default\/3842881\/2d3fed96-64cc-4629-afbe-1141517fa323.png\" alt=\"Analyze your social media efforts with Sotrender!\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/span><!-- end HubSpot Call-to-Action Code --><\/p>\n<h2>eSports in Numbers<\/h2>\n<p>Streaming games and playing in competitions for fun may seem like another thing that these basement gamers do but this is far from reality. CBS reported that the <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">League of Legends<\/span>\u00a0world championships in 2014 were watched by over 27 million people and in 2015 this number rose to 36 million and consequently to <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">43 million in 2016<\/span>; a yearly average increase of <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">25%<\/span>. In comparison, the <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Baseball World Series<\/span>\u00a0also going on during that time in 2014 only had <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">14 million viewers<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>Another interesting fact is that the attendance for the finals of the 2014 LoL championship witnessed over 40,000 people in the Seoul World Cup Stadium while other competitions took place in similar sized venues such as Madison Square Garden in New York and the Staples Center in Los Angeles (famous for hosting NBA games for teams such as the LA Lakers and LA Clippers).<\/p>\n<p>Key Arena in Seattle has been the home for the international championships of <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">DotA 2 (Defence of the Ancients 2),<\/span>\u00a0another Multiplayer Online Battle Arena boasting <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">12.5 million unique players a month<\/span>. DotA 2 is based on its predecessor, DotA which was a custom map in Blizzard Entertainment\u2019s Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne which rose to popularity before having the concept turned into a standalone game by game developer <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Valve<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>The game\u2019s yearly world championship dubbed <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">The International<\/span>\u00a0or TI is the largest eSports championship worldwide with a <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">prize pool of over $20 million in 2016 with the winning team taking home $9.1 million<\/span>, breaking its own previous record of the past year and expected to do so again this year. This is especially interesting since the prize money going in is even higher than that of the <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Cricket World Championships<\/span>, <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Wimbledon<\/span>\u00a0and <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">The Masters<\/span>\u00a0prize pools. The following figure shows some interesting facts about the top earners in eSports earnings.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 810px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sotrender.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/015f6e1c-7f28-4638-9db7-21b32c501c66_esports-earnings.png\" alt=\"Interesting facts about eSport earnings top players and social media\" width=\"800\" height=\"800\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Interesting facts from the top 50 eSports player earnings worldwide<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Unlike other game developers who assign a prize pool themselves, Valve only contributes $1.6 million to the competition and the rest of the money is accumulated from <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">player purchases<\/span>\u00a0of cosmetic items and bonuses in-game, of which <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">25% of earnings go to the prize pool<\/span>. This means that last year alone, players purchased <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">$75 million dollars<\/span>\u00a0worth of items from Valve related to <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">only TI items<\/span>. To put this into perspective, these are the earnings from purchases related to <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">one event, for one game in the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena genre of games on PCs<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>In comparison to other large sports events, below are the comparative winnings for first-place teams\/players in some other traditional widely known sports in 2015 (Fifa was in 2014, happens every 4 years). This year, after the official announcement of The International Battle Pass (the tool which is used to raise money for the prize pool) in the beginning of May, the prize pool is already up at <strong>$13.56 million in one month<\/strong>. Removing the amount of money that Valve puts in, this accumulates to <strong>$47.84 million\u00a0<\/strong>of revenues for Valve in a one month period for Battle Pass purchases alone.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_27749\" style=\"width: 513px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-27749\" class=\"size-full wp-image-27749\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sotrender.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/international-battle-pass-5-6-2017.png\" alt=\"The current prize pool of The International competition 2017\" width=\"503\" height=\"809\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.sotrender.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/international-battle-pass-5-6-2017.png 503w, https:\/\/www.sotrender.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/international-battle-pass-5-6-2017-475x764.png 475w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 503px) 100vw, 503px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-27749\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The current prize pool of The International competition &#8211; one month after the official announcement<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The winning team of the <strong>Fifa World Cup<\/strong>, the largest and most watched sporting event worldwide (over 600 million viewers) won <strong>$35 million in 2014<\/strong>; possible every 4 years, putting their earnings at an <strong>average of $8.75 million<\/strong> if not accounting that the number of players is more than double that of a Dota 2 team <strong>(11 in football compared to 5 in Dota 2)<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><!--HubSpot Call-to-Action Code --><span id=\"hs-cta-wrapper-17aa57f4-5c32-46e4-a7e9-d94ffcd56c10\" class=\"hs-cta-wrapper\"><span id=\"hs-cta-17aa57f4-5c32-46e4-a7e9-d94ffcd56c10\" class=\"hs-cta-node hs-cta-17aa57f4-5c32-46e4-a7e9-d94ffcd56c10\"><!-- [if lte IE 8]>\n\n\n<div id=\"hs-cta-ie-element\"><\/div>\n\n\n<![endif]--><a href=\"https:\/\/cta-redirect.hubspot.com\/cta\/redirect\/3842881\/17aa57f4-5c32-46e4-a7e9-d94ffcd56c10\"><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"hs-cta-img-17aa57f4-5c32-46e4-a7e9-d94ffcd56c10\" class=\"hs-cta-img aligncenter\" style=\"border-width: 0px;\" src=\"https:\/\/no-cache.hubspot.com\/cta\/default\/3842881\/17aa57f4-5c32-46e4-a7e9-d94ffcd56c10.png\" alt=\"Start analyzing your Facebook profiles with Sotrender!\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/span><!-- end HubSpot Call-to-Action Code --><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_27807\" style=\"width: 1038px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-27807\" class=\"wp-image-27807\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sotrender.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/2015-prize-pools-1.png\" alt=\"2015 sports prize pools\" width=\"1028\" height=\"609\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.sotrender.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/2015-prize-pools-1.png 683w, https:\/\/www.sotrender.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/2015-prize-pools-1-475x282.png 475w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1028px) 100vw, 1028px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-27807\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The above data was compiled from the different official pages of the competitions in terms of first place prize distributions (Fifa World Cup earnings at $35 million divided by 4 since it happens once every 4 years)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Following the data mentioned earlier, it is not hard to imagine that the eSports and gaming industry is now valued to have yearly <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">revenues of over $100 billion<\/span>\u00a0according to <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Axiom eSports investors<\/span>\u00a0presented in a short documentary by <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mashable<\/span>; this figure is up from <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">$71 billion in 2014<\/span>\u00a0(a 41% increase or a <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">12.5% year on year growth<\/span>). This puts revenues from this industry at <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">9 times larger than the entire music industry<\/span>, which according to the <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ifpi.org\/news\/IFPI-GLOBAL-MUSIC-REPORT-2016\">IFPI<\/a><\/span>\u00a0is valued at $15 billion <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">and the film industry<\/span>\u00a0which had yearly revenues of around $40 billion from data from <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/forbes\/welcome\/?toURL=https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/simonthompson\/2016\/01\/05\/experts-predict-a-drop-in-box-office-revenue-in-2016-after-a-record-year-for-hollywood\/&amp;refURL=https:\/\/www.google.pl\/&amp;referrer=https:\/\/www.google.pl\/\">Forbes<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n<h2>eSports in Social Media<\/h2>\n<p>With these advances, people are taking to <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">social media<\/span>\u00a0to <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">promote the games<\/span>, the <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">teams <\/span>and\u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">themselves <\/span>as <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">casters<\/span>, <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">streamers<\/span>, <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">analysts <\/span>or <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">fans<\/span>. This has resulted in YouTube channels like <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/TheDiamondMinecart\">DanTDM <\/a><\/span>have amassed over <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">10 billion views and 15 million subscribers on YouTube<\/span>\u00a0while Twitch account <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.twitch.tv\/syndicate\">syndicate <\/a><\/span>has over <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">2 million followers<\/span>. Other social media networks such as <strong>Facebook<\/strong>, <strong>Twitter<\/strong> and <strong>Instagram<\/strong> are used to further the reach to fans and support the main content creation methods of eSports and online gaming.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sotrender.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/a0215cf5-c53c-4967-b3b6-13d2131644e6_engaged20users20report.png\" alt=\"Total engaged users eSports teams feb 24 - may 30 2017\" width=\"640\" height=\"485\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Number of engaged users daily by different eSports teams on Facebook (and an eSport fan-page) from February 24 &#8211; May 30th, 2017<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sotrender.com\/blog\/2017\/02\/take-advantage-of-the-buzz-with-real-time-marketing\/\">top post on Facebook<\/a> between the compared teams was represented by the win of one of the biggest eSports organizations, Evil Geniuses, in the <strong>Manila Masters<\/strong> in the <strong>Philippines<\/strong> in the end of May, this is probably because their fan-base according to our tool has the largest following from the Philippines with <strong>105k followers<\/strong>, completely overshadowing other countries. In the comparison between the chosen teams, four distinct peaks can be seen which gave the<strong> most engagement<\/strong> in terms of absolute numbers of fans. <strong>Next week<\/strong> we will be publishing another post detailing analyses into the different engagement patterns of <strong>teams<\/strong>, <strong>games<\/strong>, <strong>casters<\/strong> <strong>&amp;<\/strong> <strong>analysts<\/strong> as well as other categories of <strong>content creators<\/strong> in the eSports industry.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve noticed that in Poland, where Sotrender is based, there is a lot of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sotrender.com\/trends\/facebook\/poland\/201704\/marki\/technologie\/gry_i_konsole\">enthusiasm for eSports<\/a> especially towards ESL and such organizations who organize some of the biggest worldwide competitions in Krakow and Katowice on a yearly basis.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 353px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sotrender.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/b4b8c75d-33d7-49aa-ba77-8f8208974eef_j6QR7QDBTr4gbjexSSBLA9VFCPUY1tGmyg65uLoiuiH2Id-izq5jrFbLYnE3jVcq7L4H1BQUZR75uzuVEJJnwlTY2Gw28brJehsSWIkY2gmNJheYPEMYe_YPHQwsaJWVh4emEwbTe4o2LVNSnA.png\" alt=\"Top post from the comparison report on Sotrender, official post below\" width=\"343\" height=\"397\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Top post from the comparison report on Sotrender, official post below<\/p><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; overflow: hidden;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FEvilGeniuses%2Fposts%2F10154713132988099&amp;width=500\" width=\"500\" height=\"341\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Interested in knowing more details? Follow us <strong>next week\u00a0<\/strong>for a more detailed analysis of different industries, channels and games using the Sotrender tool!<\/p>\n<p>Let us know what you think in the comments below!<\/p>\n<p><!--HubSpot Call-to-Action Code --><span id=\"hs-cta-wrapper-2d3fed96-64cc-4629-afbe-1141517fa323\" class=\"hs-cta-wrapper\"><span id=\"hs-cta-2d3fed96-64cc-4629-afbe-1141517fa323\" class=\"hs-cta-node hs-cta-2d3fed96-64cc-4629-afbe-1141517fa323\"><!-- [if lte IE 8]>\n\n\n<div id=\"hs-cta-ie-element\"><\/div>\n\n\n<![endif]--><a href=\"https:\/\/cta-redirect.hubspot.com\/cta\/redirect\/3842881\/2d3fed96-64cc-4629-afbe-1141517fa323\"><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"hs-cta-img-2d3fed96-64cc-4629-afbe-1141517fa323\" class=\"hs-cta-img aligncenter\" style=\"border-width: 0px;\" src=\"https:\/\/no-cache.hubspot.com\/cta\/default\/3842881\/2d3fed96-64cc-4629-afbe-1141517fa323.png\" alt=\"Analyze your social media efforts with Sotrender!\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/span><!-- end HubSpot Call-to-Action Code --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When mentioning eSports, a lot of people can\u2019t really identify with the concept or idea behind a spectator sport based on people watching others play a game on a computer or console like the PS4 or Xbox One. Many people also still consider gamers as lazy people sitting in their basements in front of their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":27745,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1777,1779],"tags":[715,1281,2363,2365],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>eSports: Are they here to stay? \u2013 Sotrender Blog \u2013 Analyze, Benchmark &amp; Report Your Social Media Performance<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Ever wondered how eSports are performing and are expected to keep going? 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