What Is Esports And Why It Became a Billion Dollar Industry

Playing video games and make money used to mean hosting little get-togethers in a friend’s house or go to the gaming lounge.

But even if you win, the money wasn’t a lot to maintain a professional career or quit your day job but now times have changed, and more gamers are using their skills to create profitable business events, You can track recent player earnings at esport-masters.

Game influencers like Roosterteeth and PewDiePie accumulated millions of subscribers through the use of YouTube. Live streamers like Ninja and Shroud became global fanbases with the growth of Twitch. Professional gamers KuroKy and Sumail have lost got huge amounts of cash from winning the gaming contests.

The gaming industry is now led by the development of big games, but also gamers prepared to dedicate meaningful hours every day to hone their art. The very best of these gamers battle in the world of Esports.

What is Esports?

Esports are short for electronic sports. It is a kind of competition where professional players face others or in teams or individually. Competitions are held in a multiplayer setting, and there are cash prizes granted at the end of tournaments.

There are different types of Esports tournaments:

• First-person shooter events like Call of Duty and Apex Legend.
• Multiplayer battle arena (MOBA) online events like Dota 2 and League of Legends.
• Fighter game competitions like Mortal Kombat and Super Smash Bros.
• Sports game competitions like Madden and NBA2K.
• There are many events like card games and real-time strategies.

Esports History

Esports traces its origin story back to 1972 when a Space Invaders Championship accommodates 10,000 gaming participants. After that in 1998, another legendary event happened, with Starcraft 2 on PC which accumulated more than 50 million online viewers, 17 million of those views are from Twitch.

In the 2000s, Esports gained some huge momentum. Tournament hosts such as the World Cyber Games and the Electronic Sports World Cup started, followed by the release of Major League Gaming (MLG) in 2002. MLG is deemed one of the world’s most famous hosts in the Esports world these days.

Now, there’s more cash involved in Esports than ever before. Prizes for both the 2019 Dota 2 International and the 2019 Fornite World Cup exceeded $30 million.

Epic Games the makers of the famous Unreal Engine powering games like Gears of War and Infinity Blade – maintained an unprecedented $100 million prize for the 2019 Fortnite World Cup.

Professional Fortnite gamer Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf, at the age of 16, won $3 million at the most latest tournament, making it the largest cash win by a single player in the history of Esports.

The Esports Market Explained

In 2019, Esports surpassed the $1 billion mark. Almost half of that sponsorship money comes from sponsors like Red Bull, Mountain Dew, T-Mobile, Audi, and various other huge brands.

Esports audience

The world of Esports wouldn’t gain such fame without its very dedicated audience. There are approximately 450 million viewers of Esports competition, however, that figure is expected to get a lot bigger over the next few years.

An extraordinary 57 percent of Esports fans come from the Asia-Pacific. For some, this isn’t unusual, as APAC has always had a great presence in the video gaming industry.

Esports has a male-heavy fanbase, but things have improved. Women make up more than 30 percent of the gaming audience now – Which is 6.5 percent higher from 2016.

With the growth of Esports comes an energized generation of gamers, and some unprecedented opportunities for video game publishers and developers. The new research reveals us that more than one-third of gamers all around the world quit their jobs today if they could attempt a full-time career in the pro gaming world.