With more people watching Esports tournaments, traditional sports broadcasters are undoubtedly sweating as the number of people they previously relied on jump ship. More young people may be consuming live Esports events via streaming rather than waiting for their favorite show to come on television at a scheduled time. New statistics suggest why they might do that.
The Betting And Commercial Landscape
Online sportsbook platforms such as Lottoland were early adopters of e-sports betting using real-time data to set odds. The power of commerce may lie in the large scale of the audience. Bet365 even went so far as to invest in real-time coverage of some of the biggest esports events on the platform. The fact that traditional sportsbook owners who took decades to get deep into covering the biggest traditional sports like football and horse racing are starting to invest in sports can be a good indicator of where the market is headed.
Where Traditional Games Get Lost
The Active lives survey published annually by Sport England paints a disturbing picture of sports attendance among under-35s, showing a long-term decline rather than a single event. The value of broadcast rights is in the eye of the beholder, but the audience for traditional sports is getting older. Esport should attract the attention of a very new audience, but they are likely to watch it in new places that everyone thinks are the future of sports – on the Internet, on digital platforms such as Twitch or YouTube.
Many traditional sports organizations have entered the sport. Owners of several NFL and NBA teams have purchased various electronic and professional sports teams in recent years. Forbes has reported on the trend of traditional games entering the world of esports, as older, traditional games struggle to keep younger viewers engaged in order to preserve the viewership of traditional sports broadcasts.
Recognition And The Road Ahead
In the UK competitive and casual video games have recently caught the attention of the government, with policy makers at the DCMS examining the role gaming can play in the wider digital economy. How games fit into broader strategies to support the technology sector, science parks and innovation centers is important for the funding of gaming infrastructure such as dedicated sports arenas and large events. The growth of competitive sports has also seen the Guardian move its coverage of sporting events to a mainstream level, exceeding industry predictions about the extent to which the event will penetrate the consciousness of a wider audience. Audience figures for top-flight tournaments have in some cases increased and are now equal to the average viewing figures for major football tournaments. The total viewership figures for the 2023 League of Legends World Championship reached 73,705,991 concurrent viewers, impressive even for most mainstream sports.
A Structural Shift, Not a Passing Trend
A look at the latest data tells a similar story: young audiences are driving audience growth, especially through digital channels, where private companies and governments are investing to chase new audiences. While it’s true that traditional sports are often able to attract viewers that rival large esports events (which can have upwards of 20–30 thousand viewers), the key is in the level of growth. That trend is clearly going in one direction, and those in the industry who hope to avoid acknowledging the truth can ignore it for much longer. Traditional games are now facing the cold reality of declining growth rates compared to their new digital rivals, and it’s one that needs to be embraced by broadcasters, rights holders and advertisers alike.
