Kieran "Kez" Brown joined City as its first e-sports player last year
Forecasters have predicted that e-sport will attract global revenue of £1bn because the size of the audience is expected to grow by a double digit come 2020. To be precise, the audience has been projected to hit the 600 million mark by 2020. So it is actually easy to see why the e-sport market will realize such revenue estimates.
Basically, e-sport is an organized competition in computer gaming where a live audience can sit in a hall to watch two players battling it out. E-sport has the explosive potential of joining the list of the top 5 sports in the world. This is not just a fad but a reality that is here to stay with us. Furthermore, we have seen that online casinos like InstaCasino are taking proactive measures to prepare themselves for the boom that is likely to be witnessed in the e-sport industry.
Right now, some English football clubs have already began employing professional gamers. A good example of this is Manchester City football club. Another good example is the Paris St-Germain, a French football club which has since created an e-sports team to help with expanding their brand.
Last year (2016), e-sports had some 320 million fans across the globe. This saw the industry making $493million in revenue collection. Price money of $93m was given to the best player at League of Legends world championship. This is considered the largest e-sport event in the world.
But why have sports clubs decided to focus on e-sport teams?
Paris St-Germain has been in the forefront of promoting e-sport teams. They joined this movement in October, and now the team is accredited with successfully acquiring their own e-sport franchise while signing in some 3 famous players.
The club is aimed at raising its global profile by expanding its activities beyond normal football playing. They are particularly targeting an audience from the US and Asian markets.
West Ham and Manchester City have already signed in players who will be representing them at the Fifa football game. However, British clubs have not set up a dedicated e-sport team to represent them.
Experts still believe that e-sport is the future of soccer clubs. They even predict the emergence of an internet championship league which will feature competition between various e-sport franchises.
Again, football clubs take this as a critical part of expanding their franchises. You see, sports clubs now have other avenues for generating revenue. They depend on sources outside their leagues, and this means that e-sport will be poised for better growth as these clubs set their eyes on it as the next objective.
In fact, it would be right to say that they are currently testing the waters to see how profitable it would be. Their main agenda is to implement it in the long term.
Finally, e-sport has been shown to have a global audience, where thousands if not millions are showing interest towards it every day. This can be viewed as a strategic opportunity for branding.
Conclusion
Like we have said before, this isn’t some kind of a fad that is here today and gone tomorrow. With those numbers, one can draw conclusions that e-sports are here to stay. It only needs to be well-regulated just like other sports are, and interest will surge further, thanks to the media.