The Economics in ESports

Recently, eSports have been having a much greater impact on the economy. With prizes up to 1 million dollars for professional players and viewer bases in the millions, the eSports industry has been growing rapidly into a giant industry. Because of games like Overwatch and League of Legends, there are lots of fans of competitive gaming, and these fans create lots of revenue for platforms like twitch and youtube. Economist Emma Batha states that, "winning eSports tournaments can net participants up to $25 million when winnings, sponsorship and appearance fees are taken into account. However, detractors scoff at the idea of calling gaming a real sport. After all, gamers sit still in a chair for hours on end showing only agility and dexterity in their hands, they argue."
Lots of people are still opposed to eSports because they believe that real sports involve physical activity and are more like basketball or football. Because of this, the fanbase for eSports is 100 times smaller than basketball's fanbase, and the industry is much smaller than the industry for most sports. However, eSports are growing at an exponential rate, and is projected to make 1.4 billion dollars by 2020. Furthermore, eSports are backed by large and powerful companies such as SKTelecom and Samsung, and this enables players to make a prosperous livelihood purely based on their talents, which is attracting lots of potential eSports players.
This means that more people are aspiring to be professional esports players, and this is shown in South Korea, where aspiring gamers join gaming academies rather than studying in high school, and gaming is a huge part of their culture. This trend has both positive and negative effects, as it allows some people to successfully use their talents, but also results in a lot of disappointed kids with ruined education and futures, just like the NBA does too. No matter what the impacts are, it's clear that eSports are here to stay and will continue growing, so we must be aware of how this will change the economy and gaming industry.

Source:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/07/the-explosive-growth-of-esports/

Comments

  1. AnonymousMarch 24, 2019 at 7:52 PM

    Interesting post. I can definitely sense why people oppose Esports of not being actually "Sports". I feel that Esports is so big nowadays because it's been following the trend of online gaming for years now. With online gaming gaining so much popularity over the years as big games have hit the market, Esports accommodates the electrifying feeling of competing for people to watch all around the world. It'll be interesting to see how the next generation of adults play out with gaming gaining so much popularity nowadays. https://info.jkcp.com/blog/professional-gamer-salary-esports/

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  2. AustinMarch 24, 2019 at 11:03 PM

    Great post! It is really interesting to see the creation of an industry from a pre-existing one. The game industry has been a big market for the past few decades and it is really interesting to see how larger companies are investing in teams and organizations that recruit people just to play the game. It is also worth it to note the revenue model of the eSport industry is a combination of broadcast revenue, sponsorships, merchandise sales, and subscriptions, which is similar to how regular sport teams learn money.

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