The Emergence of eSports
By Fraser Campbell - Marketing and Content Executive 360 Sports Consultancy
The world of online gaming is in constant expansion, with more and more games becoming available there is an ever increasing potential for gamers to kickstart a career. It also presents the opportunity for companies to develop their brand image. Only last week Premier League giants, Manchester City, recruited their first eSports player. This follows on from the partnership created between Sky, Itv and Ginx who have just launched the UK’s first 24 hour eSports channel. Could this be the start of a new generation of entertainment?
Becoming a professional eSports player is a relatively new career choice in the Western world. However, in the East it has been growing for a number of years. Take South Korea for example. Stadiums that once hosted the 2002 World Cup are often packed to the rafters with avid eSport fans cheering on their new gaming heroes. These players are treated like professional footballers would be treated in Spain, Germany or in the UK. In Asia sponsorship and attendance at eSport matches generates millions of pounds every single year and the numbers keep on rising. It has been hailed as “the biggest thing to hit (the tech) industry since the launch of the iPhone in 2007”.
From a marketing standpoint the benefits of creating an eSports team are plentiful. The global audience for eSports grew 43% between 2014 and 2016, from 204 million viewers to just over 292 million. And wait for this. The revenue generated from the eSports market rose from $194million to $463million. Thats an astonishing 239% increase in just two years. These figures are expected to keep rising for the foreseeable future. Professional eSports players even qualify for a p-1 visa in the States…the same visa that professional athletes are granted.
Evidently, eSports is an industry which is currently booming in the East and is now beginning to do so in Western countries also. With both Manchester City and West Ham United each recruiting an eSports player as well as Valencia recruiting a team of players, could eSports be the next big way of attracting fans by using a modern technological approach to increase fan engagement and generating revenue for clubs and could this in turn pave way for a new generation of superstar online athletes.
