While there is no team promotion or relegation, players can be signed onto contracts, traded among teams, or let go as free agents, and new players may be pulled from the esports’ equivalent minor league. Organized video game competitions are facing the trend of receiving a significant increase in mainstream media coverage as a traditional sport (Pizzo, et al., 2018). It is considered the world’s fastest-growing sport and the first, together with football, that is truly global. As a result, the top eSports tournaments are already drawing crowds rivaling traditional sporting events such as the World Cup football and the Olympic Games. Many esports events are streamed online to viewers over the internet. With the shutdown of the Own3d streaming service in 2013, Twitch is by far the most popular streaming service for esports, competing against other providers such as Hitbox.tv, Azubu, and YouTube Gaming.

• Although large tournaments were founded before the 21st century, the number and scope of tournaments has increased significantly, going from about 10 tournaments in 2000 to about 260 in 2010.
• Blizzard is on the forefront of this with the geo-localized franchises in the Overwatch League and soon the Call of Duty World League.
• In addition to these nationwide leagues, some states and regions offer organized high school esports action.
• This is a common statistic used for measuring the popularity of esports, since unlike traditional sports, esports viewers tend to come in and drop out throughout the duration of the event.
• Baseball is also gaining popularity in some countries, like in the United Kingdom, where the sport is reputed to have started in the 1800s before exploding in the United States.
• Sites like Skillz will allow you to win money by competing in hyper-casual titles like Bubble Blaster but has a long way to go before millions of fans tune in to watch the results, much less bet on a winner.

Regarding prizing money, eSports is already competing with traditional sports making it extremely attractive for both future gamers and potential spectators. However, regarding sponsorship revenues, eSports is source for sports skates still far behind traditional sports which is rather surprising when looking at the audience potential. Thus, there is still plenty of room for investors and brands to hop on the train and engage in this potentially huge market.

Player Exploitation

But not everything in sports translates to esports as there are some notable differences. Upon learning them, you’ll realize the complexities that esports entails. We did mention in our previous article that both esports and traditional sports offer a high level of tactical analysis, but upon further dissection we realized that esports analysis goes beyond the usual approach.

After many years of ignoring and at times suppressing the esports scene, Nintendo hosted Wii Games Summer 2010. Spanning over a month, the tournament had over 400,000 participants, making it the largest and most expansive tournament in the company’s history. In 2014 Nintendo hosted an invitational Super Smash Bros. for Wii U competitive tournament at the 2014 Electronic Entertainment Expo press conference that was streamed online on Twitch.

Promotion And Relegation Leagues

Let’s return to one of the world’s largest sports organizations, if not the largest, FIFA. As implied by “unique,” that means that astronomical number does not even include the viewers who tuned in to the 2015 World Championship Series for League of Legends a second, third, or even fourth time. Who knows, too, how many people might have been sharing a computer and were counted as only one view. Saahil, or “Universe,” Arora is best known for playing Dota 2 in the Esports scene.

Fantasy Sports Vs Esports

The esports industry appears to be entering an exciting stage of its development. Financial investments into leagues and teams have left large parts of the ecosystem extremely well capitalized. The proliferation of game-streaming has placed it squarely into the mainstream, with well-known streamer Ninja recently appearing on the cover of ESPN The Magazine.

Vantage In Apex Legends: How To Play

Once you know the type of character you want to create, you will need to find a program that allows you to make a 3D model that will represent you during each stream. Some popular programs that are easy to use include the appReadyPlayerMeorVRoid. The numbers for Riot’s 2016 Worlds Tournament are still in limbo, but for the 2015 Worlds Tournament, statisticians reported a total of 360 million total hours of live viewing of the tournament.

Newzoo predicts that there are about 2.7 billion gamers across the world, and they spent $159 billion on the pastime in 2020. Despite the stereotype of a young, overweight teenage boy playing games in his mother’s basement, the average age of a gamer is actually 35, and approximately half of them are female. The most popular gaming device is the one you already have — your phone.