Why Are Sports Brands Entering Esports?
Research thinktank Newzoo’s latest marketing study bares some insights on the recent spate of sports and consumer brands investing into eSports.
With NBA franchise owners and teams buying up investments left and right, Newzoo suggests three key reasons for the steady rise in interest into the world of competitive video games.
In summary: the eSports industry is well-positioned to reach the unreachable market, have a truly massive global spectator base and finally a strong trajectory towards becoming a multi-billion dollar business by 2018.
According to Newzoo, the millenial audience aged 21-35 and the incoming generation’s media consumption is far different from older consumers. The active engagement endemic to eSports has captured minds. 22% of the 21-35 surveyed by Newzoo rank eSports higher than Ice Hockey and equal to Baseball in terms of viewership and engagement.
That games have become global is old news for fans of competitive video games, but Newzoo’s data suggests that the truly massive effect of livestreaming sites such as Twitch.tv, YouTube and the Chinese streaming websites are clocking in 100,000 unique visitors monthly.
All of this contributes to a potential rise in global eSports revenues. With a final quarter left for 2016, Newzoo says that the revenues in eSports generated through merchandising, tickets, advertising and media rights have already reached $.05 billion.
Add to that are data suggesting that sports and eSports fans are rapidly overlapping. Newzoo’s surveys pointed out that of the 80 million active American Basketball fans, 9.6 million are also eSports fans.
The numbers all point out that sports brands are doing well by investing into eSports to better serve existing fans and drawing new fans into their franchises.
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