What if I told you there was an industry that is a bigger moneymaker than the North American sports industry and global movie industry combined? Now, what if I told you about an industry that’s bigger than the previous two is one you know barely anything about
In 2020, the global video game revenue was expected to reach $179.7 billion. Yes, that’s billion with a “b”.
Yes, you heard that correctly. Video games are the ones dominating not only North American sports but also the entire movie industry.
And talking about the video game industry doesn’t even cover the main point of this video, which is esports.
Before we go any further, we should probably explain what esports is.
Long story short, esports are sports competitions using video games. The players that compete in these leagues are known as professional players.
The big titles they play in esports are: League of Legends, DOTA, Counterstrike, Overwatch, Fortnite, Call of Duty, and the list goes on and on.
Now let’s dive into those numbers a little bit.
ESports revenues were around $856 million in 2018, but that number is expected to bubble-up to $1.79 billion by 2022. Those numbers include media rights, merchandise, ticket sales, advertising, sponsorship and game publisher fees.
This is usually where people start asking for viewership numbers.
In 2020, the League of Legends world championship drew 3.8 million viewers. In 2018, CS:GO had 1.9 million viewers for its Eleague major final which matched up the super-team FaZe vs. the underdogs Cloud 9.