The esports & recreation market has snowballed in recent years. Consumers constantly seek new hobbies and activities to enjoy, whether going to the theater, keeping fit in the gym, or discovering new PC and console games. Moreover, sports and esports have conformed to the online world, the rise of online betting, and the reshaping of fans’ interests and needs.
However, the Covid-19 pandemic forced the entire world to stay indoors for months. Lockdown stopped people from enjoying their favorite hobbies and froze loads of industries, including professional sports.
Esports entertainment is becoming more popular
Despite the spread of Covid-19, the esports market has experienced a boom in recent years. As a result, the number of viewers of esports games, fans, and professional players is constantly multiplying, thus helping the whole entertainment industry to stay alive.
While cinemas and sporting events closed their doors to stop the spread of the disease, many people turned to home entertainment and esports during periods of self-isolation. Statista reports that a higher number of people had spent more time watching esports since the pandemic.
According to Newzoo’s 2021 Global Esports & Live Streaming Market Report, the industry saw its audience grow by more than 38 million throughout 2020. Globally, the total esports audience will grow to 474.0 million people in 2021, a year-on-year growth of +8.7%. Esports enthusiasts will make up 234 million of this number, growing +8.7% year on year.
Seth Schneider, the product manager of esports at NVIDIA Corp.’s GeForce gaming division, speaking at CES 2021, said that esports was already going mainstream, with traditional sports athletes and other significant names increasingly investing in the medium, and COVID-19 just “turbocharged” that process.
“We suddenly had musicians holding concerts in Fortnite and major sports personalities playing video games on live streams. This exposed gaming and esports to people who had never even thought about competitive gaming as a concept,” Schneider said.
Besides, according to a special cross-platform evaluation conducted by GfK Entertainment, FIFA 21 became the most successful game of 2020 in 16 of the 19 countries surveyed. The latest iteration in the series has followed on from its predecessors FIFA 20, FIFA 19, and FIFA 18, which dominated the market in 2019, 2018 and 2017.
Today, esports fans can be found almost in every country in the world
Fans show their support for esports and their favorite teams by purchasing and pre-ordering games, creating fan content, and betting.
Attention to esports keeps on rising on a global scale, and the idea of betting on esports is becoming more accepted.
In 2019 news agencies reported that the esports betting industry was worth more than $1 billion. A report from Market Insight Reports said that the global esports betting market size is expected to gain market growth in the forecast period of 2020 to 2025, with a CAGR of 13.1%, and will be expected to reach $13.05 billion in 2025, from $7983.2 million in 2019.
According to SportingPedia, the esports betting industry keeps on rising exponentially. Today, competitive video gaming is among the most preferred hobbies all over the world. The quantity of fans also increases. In 2018, the number of frequent esports viewers was over 170M, and the occasional viewers — 222M. In 2020, it was reported that these figures significantly increased. The number of regular viewers is almost 220M, and the occasional viewers are over 270M.
The report also stated: “Even though the sports betting industry witnessed a significant slowdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic that led to the cancelation of many sports events, the esports market continued its rapid global growth. According to a recent report released by the UK Gambling Commission, the esports industry marked an incredible year-on-year growth of 2992%.”
Efootball is one of the most popular esports disciplines globally, and it becomes more and more well-liked today
That must be said that efootball has dramatically boosted the gaming market. The number of ESportsBattle efootball tournament views has significantly increased in 2020: from 4M in June to 22M in December.
ESportsBattle is continually expanding its horizons by constantly testing new game efootball, ebasketball, eice hockey, CS:GO formats which are popular in 150+ countries.
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