Pro Gaming Audiences
People seem baffled by the explosive rise in popularity of competitive and professional gaming. Leagues are bursting at the seams, multimillion dollar capital funding (MLG’s $10m) deals are being doled out, and even folks like Snoop Dogg are getting in on the act. Players are becoming stars in their own right (Fatal1ty, Vanessa), touted much the same as individuals across the major sporting leagues and television providers (like spikeTV andDirectTV) are clambering over each other to air matches, tournaments, and gaming news.
The most common question I get when I talk to people unfamiliar with the phenomenon is: “Really? Who would watch that??”. It seems there’s an underestimation as to exactly how huge the gaming industry is, from little tykes playing Franklin the Turtle on their GBAs, to pro gamers who seek out sponsors to allow them to practice and play full time.
‘E-sports’, namely the playing of computer and video games as competitive sports, is growing faster than I can keep track of it, and with it the stakes are creeping ever higher. Like any other sport, professional gaming has developed into an industry juggernaut of potential earnings, with big-business player sponsorships, contracts, inter-team player trading, and seven figure prize purses quickly becoming the norm. Several major leagues have been in existence since the late 1990’s, and are growing yearly in members, sponsors, number and size of competitions, and, perhaps most importantly, fanbase. The World Cyber Games (WCG), the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL), the Cyber X Games, the Global Gaming League (GGL), the Championship Gaming Series, the Hip Hop Gaming League, and the World Series of Video Games are perhaps the most well known of the competitions. The largest organized gaming league and international sanctioning body, Major League Gaming (MLG), recently secured $10 million in funding from Ritchie Capital to “help the company continue to transform competitive video game play into a mass market, global, sports media business”.
E-sports are being promoted as spectator sports equally as exciting as mainstream athletic competitions. Attendance numbers at major events seem to bear this out, with over 39,000 spectators attending the 2005 World Cyber Games to cheer on their respective favourites. Successful players such as Johnathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel, who has earned over half a million dollars in his six year professional career, or Korean Jihoon Seo, who has over 7000 personal fan clubs in his home country, are fast becoming the superstars of the e-sports world, with handles instantly recognizable to gaming fans.
Video game console and software title sales (a projected $69.5 billion in 2011) is challenging the combined revenues of traditional major league sports (NBA, NFL, and MLB). The rising popularity of online and multiplayer competition as an integral part of the gaming experience has steered certain game genres, such as first person shooters, sports franchises, and real time strategy games into more organized, higher profile tournaments with deeper prize purses. Increasing sponsorships for these competitions has led to a dramatic rise in the amount of money to be won. Using the World Cyber Games as an example, the graph below demonstrates the explosive growth of professional gaming at the beginning of the decade.
Who then, is behind the push? I see the audience of pro-gaming as being separable into three main, overly generalized segments:
- Competitors. The number of competitive gamers worldwide, taking part in everything from flambuoyant professional leagues, to more humble title-specific ladders, is well over 2 million. Event results, competition profiles and major tournaments keep these folks hooked on pro-gaming, and new recruits are added to the fold daily.
- Gaming Fans. Competition participants aside, the network of fansites and official league forums is continually growing. Currently, on the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) forums there are nearly 35,000 registered members, and on the Major League Gaming (MLG) forums, over 1 million interested parties have registered. E-sports truly are a spectator-friendly form of entertainment and mainstream media providers such as ESPN and CNN have featured the digital competition phenomenon on their networks. E-sports are exciting, entertaining, and easily identify with their viewing audience. These spectators, like their counterparts in traditional sports, look online for the latest news across all the leagues, updated profiles, available media, trade rumours, and contract signings.
- Sports Convertibles. Another audience segment may be called ’sports convertibles’. While at the moment they may only be watching traditional competitions and matches, clever marketing in the traditional sports arena will enable the site to draw from this enormous, untapped resource, and attract enthusiasts with the promise of something new and digitally exciting. There is little disconnect in the shift from watching Major League Baseball to watching a Halo 2 match, and if anything, viewers will be able to more easily identify with gaming competitors than with the sensationalized images of professional athletes.
I would put myself as a #1, having participated in the CPL, the OGL, BQL, and numberous smaller entities that are no longer around. I never played for cash, and thus wouldn’t say I was ever a ‘pro’ gamer, but the quest for competition was definitely there and I certainly read up on my leagues’ news and events on a regular basis. Where do you fit in?
Also check out August’s poll in the right hand menu!
