Esports & live streaming

While the future of the industry has been pinned to developments in Web3, NFT collectibles, VR, the metaverse, play-to-earn crypto, betting rights deals and innumerable others, the quicker win might be to improve audience measurement and ad targeting capabilities on its streaming platforms.

Ad frequency is still low, and esports’ interactivity and intimacy is a powerful tool for brands to capture the attention of hard-to-reach viewers. Gamers and streamers are also willing to play ball to take full financial advantage of their brief moment in the spotlight.

In-person gaming events were gaining momentum before Covid hit, but they’ve struggled to adjust to the post-pandemic correction. The 2021 League of Legends World Championship Finals, the biggest esports tournament in the world, was watched by a peak concurrent audience of 74m people — all online.

Sports fans pay large sums of money on a weekly basis to cheer on their team from the stands, despite games being available to watch on TV. Esports event organisers must do more to augment the fan experience of watching live gaming in an arena over watching a stream at home.

It takes 10k hours to master a skill, as the saying goes. Most esports gamers go professional between 16 and 18, and retire as early as their mid-20s, meaning the window of opportunity is shorter than you might think.

Startups are leveraging data analytics to find the best players at a young age and replicating training structures from traditional sports to propel them to the (lucrative) next level. As many as 64m players will participate in organised tournaments in 2022.

Esports has so far been concentrated on consoles and PCs, but the bigger prize may be tapping into mobile, which accounts for two thirds of the £20bn European gaming market.

Mobiles can’t compete with the higher processing power of the other two, but where they do hold the advantage is their universalism and ease of payment and wallet systems for in-game micro-transactions.