eSports Report: Bigger Than The NFL By 2020

Sporting competition focused on video game prowess is to find a global audience larger than the NFL by 2020, a new report suggests.

Digital Games: eSports 2015-2020, a November report from Juniper Research, predicts that 2015's 133 million person eSports audience will more than double to 310 million in five years' time.

 

In doing so, it would overtake the NFL (220 million global viewers in 2014) and start to approach Formula 1 racing (400m).

 

By then, the eSports audience would be generating an estimated US$1bil (RM4.3bil) in revenue, as live-streaming services such as Twitch TV offer subscriber perks to enhance standard free broadcasts.

In terms of how eSports competitions will be watched, Juniper's predicting a complementary future for YouTube and Twitch, at least in the mid-term.

Despite YouTube's expansion into live streaming, it expects both services to continue along traditional lines: Google-owned YouTube for archived video uploads, Amazon's Twitch for live streaming.

The availability of mobile and console streaming apps means viewers don't need a computer to watch tournaments unfold. But in terms of play, the PC is still preferred.

The flexibility of the platform has allowed players to tweak and enhance retail games, a pivotal early stage in creating eSports juggernauts like Dota and Counter-Strike.

Computers' keyboards and high-end processors are better suited to the demands of complex competitive games, and the style of games available, such as the MOBA genre currently driving eSports' expansion, has also been a key attraction.

But to provide further context, both PlayStation and Xbox have made efforts to increase support for competitive play. Annual franchises like Fifa, Call of Duty and Halo are well oriented towards to the console scene.

Rocket League has been a recent success, while Smite and Dungeon Defenders II at last offer a console-friendly taste of the MOBA approach.

A more physical future for eSports?

Looking to the future, Juniper asks how horizons might be broadened.

Perhaps not on mobile, it believes, whose users want games they can "jump in and out of, rather than the longer format seen in eSports competitions" – a preference that titles like Vainglory and Call of Champions have grappled with by offering 20 and 5 minute matches respectively.

Rather, Virtual Reality headsets may provide an avenue for expansion.

It's an intriguing observation, given that a selection of early 2016 headsets – the PlayStation VR and HTC Vive included – can track the wearer's body movements. The Oculus Rift has motion-tracked Oculus Touch controllers.