Esports - The New Wave Of Sports

Banana, Fenrir and ppd. No, that’s not a profound spellcheck error, but actually three superstar players who, as part of separate teams, competed for $10.1m in prize funds at a single tournament earlier this year. To make a comparison, this is only 19% less than what UEFA paid out to Real Madrid for winning La Décima in 2014.

Unlike Bale, Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo, however, you probably haven’t heard of them, their teams or even the sport they play. They won their money playing Dota 2, an online multiplayer battle arena game, think digital chess combined with fantasy gaming, and they represent top members of the growing eSports community

ESports is a catchall phrase for what is essentially competitive computer gaming: organised tournaments, put on either by game producers, game players or independent bodies. The range of competitive games is, as you’d expect, huge, but they mostly fit within competitive categories; from the lesser-known computer-based multiplayer games, such as League of Legends and the aforementioned Dota 2, to major console gaming titles such as Call of Duty and the EA Sports FIFA Series.

ESports have long been part of gaming culture, but as this generation of tech-savvy gamers has grown up with high-speed Internet in conjunction with the growth of free-to-use video stream sites, such as YouTube and Twitch, the growth of the competition and consumption elements of eSports has sky-rocketed. We spoke with Kyle Bautista, General Manager of compLexity Gaming – one of the world leaders in competitive gaming – who told us: ‘Players and teams have been competing in these games for decades, but the problem was being able to expose a large enough audience to them to get people to know they existed, let alone sustain any substantial growth. The biggest contributor to the growth of eSports is likely Twitch and other livestreaming services.’

Following its growth in 2014, which saw its number of visitors surge by 513% from 371m to 1.9bn, Twitch was purchased by Amazon, and whilst the parent company’s influence has so far been minor, Twitch’s recent purchase of the company ‘Good Game’ – which manages eSports teams ‘Evil Geniuses’ and ‘Alliance’ and also curates eSports tournaments – suggests that Twitch is looking to integrate itself even further into eSports culture.