E-sport, or competitive video gaming, is a promising market with a growing audience and partnerships. A sign of its legitimacy in both the economic and sporting spheres, the discipline will have its own Olympics in 2025.
Their names are FIFA, Fortnite, Call of Duty, Counter Strike: Global Offensive and League of Legends.
In e-sport, where two or more players face off against each other on video screens watched by a large number of spectators, the names of the biggest video game franchises and game types replace the names of sporting disciplines.
While the development of e-sport is inextricably linked to the development of video games in the 1970s, its development intensified in the 1980s with arcade games launched by Atari. The Japanese editor was one of the first publishers to organize an e-sports event with its Space Invaders Championship.
Today, this fast-moving market is estimated to be worth $1.5 billion worldwide. A figure to be set against the $159.3 billion international video game market, more than double that generated by the film and music industries combined. With 3 billion players, this industry is the world’s leading entertainment sector.
More than just video games
E-sport, or competitive video gaming, is a sport in which professional and amateur players compete against each other, either alone or in teams, using online or networked video games.
Long gone are the days when the winner of Stanford University’s first video game championship, based on SpaceWar!, won a year’s subscription to Rolling Stones magazine. Indeed, just like ordinary sports competitions, the challenge for gamers is to win titles, cups and other prizes accompanied by financial gains, through sponsorships associated with the player’s individual image or image revenues.
In 2023, 250 million cash prizes were awarded at 47,000 international events.
Players linked to structures can also benefit from financial support, as well as travel and accommodation facilities.
In 1972, the SpaceWar! Originel attracted 10,000 participants, e-sport is now attracting crowds. By 2023, the global e-sport audience is estimated at 500 million people. For example, the latest Major Counter Strike Global Offensive held in Paris at the Accor Hotel Arena attracted 50,000 spectators. In France alone, 11.7 million French people claim to be e-sport fans.
Halfway between entertainment and a sporting event, e-sport has a strong economic impact at local, national and even international level. Revenues from competitive video games come from brand sponsorship, broadcasting rights and licenses, as well as ticket sales and merchandising.
Business models are even emerging in talent management and coaching, made possible by real-time analysis programs such as Blitz, which enable League of Legends players to improve their tactics and decipher various statistics. Fashion and lifestyle products such as energy drinks are also booming.
An unusual instrument of soft power
As well as generating economic benefits, e-sport is also a new instrument of soft power and attractiveness for countries and regions.
A true pioneer in the promotion and support of e-sport, South Korea has developed real know-how since the 1990s, to the point of taking the lion’s share of prizes in League of Legends championships, with 7 world titles out of the 13 competitions organized.
This videogame franchise, owned by Riot Games, has gained unprecedented visibility in 2019 thanks to a partnership with Louis Vuitton to design the trophy cases. League of Legends is the most popular PC game in the world, with 180 million monthly active players by 2022.
While the Asia-Pacific region is particularly dynamic when it comes to e-sports, the discipline is also booming in the Gulf States, where a vast movement of mergers and acquisitions is underway.
Qatar, for example, which has focused its development on soccer, acquired the Hong Kong club Talon Esport in 2020.
The first major European soccer club to invest in the e-sport world in 2016, Paris Saint Germain has announced that it is extending its partnership with League of Legends until 2026, in order to push its PSG Talon team even further at the Pacific Championship Series across Asia.
In Saudi Arabia, Sultan Faisal Ben Bandar Al Saud intends to make e-sport one of the development pillars of his “Vision 2030” plan. An investment of $38 billion from sovereign wealth funds is expected to create 35,000 jobs and generate $13.3 billion in revenues from this videogame activity over the next six years.
A recognized sport
Although an international federation was set up in 2008 with the aim of recognizing the discipline as a sport in its own right, e-sport was still seen in some quarters as an otaku or simple geek activity.
Much more like a couch potato’s best companion, like binge-watching series on Netflix and company, than a serious sporting discipline.
Aware of the need to change mentalities and above all to rejuvenate the audience for the Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee has included new practices that are highly popular with 18-24 year-olds, such as skateboarding, surfing and breakdancing, for the Paris 2024 games.
The challenge was all the greater in that the younger generation is not as receptive as previous generations to live sports events. An American study by Morning Consult Research in 2022 confirms this trend, with only 27% of respondents from the Gen Z cohort watching traditional live sports matches every week, compared with 48% of Millennials.
At the end of July, following the close of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee – which set up a commission on the subject last September – gave the go-ahead for the creation of the first Olympic Games for competitive video games. Alongside the traditional Olympics, e-sport will be able to raise its profile tenfold with the first games scheduled to take place in Saudi Arabia in 2025.
With its own jerseys and team names, more and more matches held in stadiums and requiring both physical and mental training, e-sport has acquired the status of a sporting discipline in its own right. The discipline is all the more promising in that it isone of the few 100% inclusive sports disciplines, along with horse racing, where men and women can compete on equal terms. What remains to be done, however, is to remedy the toxic masculinity that still plagues the sector, and bring more women into the workforce.
Read also > Saudi Arabia relies on soft power for a bright future
Featured Photo: Unsplash
