Study Shows eSports Revenues to Hit $463 Million in 2016

The Global Poker League (GPL) and Sina Sports signed a deal this week that sees Sina Sports become the Official Digital Partner of the GPL in China, giving the GPL massive exposure in the country.

Part of the press release linked to this new partnership states that the GPL, despite being poker-based, is not a gambling league, but is instead an eSport, which focusses purely on competition and interaction with fans of the various franchises.

eSports is big business and an industry in the midst of another boom. Since Atari held the Space Invaders Championship in 1980, a competition that attracted 10,000 participants across the United States, the eSports scene has exploded with global revenues set to hit some $463 million in 2016, up 43 percent from 2015, according to a study by research company Newzoo.

Although eSports has Asian roots, particularly South Korea, it is the United States that is the global leader with approximately 38-percent share of revenues. Newzoo’s CEO Peter Warman forecasts the US will maintain its lead with $175 million in eSports revenue in 2016, money generated from online advertising, media rights, merchandise, tickets, and sponsorships.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) recently published a reported entitled The Burgeoning Evolution of eSports, which highlights how big eSports has become, and how it continues to grow without any signs of slowing down. In fact, quite the opposite is true.

Social media has been a major catalyst in propelling eSports into the mainstream. Players and fans can now interact seamlessly on the various social media channels, with Twitch seen as the platform that has helped video gaming and eSports become known around the world. Twitch says that its users streamed a staggering 241 billion minutes of video in 2015, which equates to 459,000 years’ worth, an unfathomable number when you try to imagine it.

More traditional methods of social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and forums are also bustling with eSports chatter. PwC performed a three-month social listening exercise that uncovered 278,000 mentions of eSports. In November 2015, they discovered less than 5,000 mentions, yet by January 2016 this number had ballooned to 45,000.

“The rise of social media, live streaming, and expanded distribution options for broadcasts and top level competition have enabled eSports to break down geographical barriers in a way that many traditional sports have struggled with,” said Mike Sepso, Senior Vice …

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