Despite the covid pandemic, the eSports industry is on course for growth, driven in particular by sponsorship revenues.
The gaming and eSports industry has been unusually in the focus of the public and the economy in recent days. First, the takeover of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft made headlines and led to rising share prices for numerous studios.
Then, at the beginning of the week, two of the world’s largest tournament organisers in eSports, ESL and FACEIT, were taken over by the Saudi Savvy Gaming Group for a cumulative sum of around 1.5 billion US dollars.
Various market analyses show that such investments can be economically worthwhile. Despite the covid pandemic, the industry continues to grow. In their annual “Global Esports & Live Streaming Market Report”, analysts from Newzoo estimate eSports revenues for 2021 at just under 1.1 billion US dollars.
This represents a growth of around 15 per cent compared to the previous year (around 950 million US dollars) and is almost back to the pre-Covid level from 2019. eSports has thus rehabilitated itself commercially over the past few months after a smaller slump in 2020.
1.6 billion forecast by 2024
According to the analysts, the central growth driver is the sponsorship sector. With more than 600 million US dollars, it accounted for more than half of the total turnover and thus compensated for the pandemic-related drop in ticketing and broadcasting rights revenues.
This figure is all the more remarkable as it represents an increase of almost 50 per cent compared to 2019. With the end of the pandemic and the return of recently sluggish business areas, further growth in total revenue is thus to be expected.
The basis of this is the wide reach of eSports: Last year, according to the report, more than 720 million people were reached with the various live streaming offers, which corresponds to an increase of about 10 per cent compared to 2020.
Accordingly, analysts were already optimistic for the coming years in the past. By 2024, the turnover will climb to about 1.6 billion US dollars, according to Newzoo’s estimate – assuming a timely end to the pandemic.