During the third day of the LA Virtual Screenings 2021, Isadora dos Santos, Juniors Market Analyst at Newzoo, presented the panel “The Global E-Sports and Game-related Live-Streaming Ecosystem”. From market and audience sizing to key developments, this session was a deep-dive into the e-sports, gaming and live-streaming markets, offering a realistic estimate of the ecosystem’s current and future performance.
“The e-sports industry has seen tremendous growth over the last decade, both in terms of viewership and revenues. We expect the market’s revenues to reach US$1 billion by the end of 2021. One of the reasons for that is that now a lot of endemic and not-endemic brand are investing in e-sports marketing both directly and indirectly,” dos Santos commented. According to Newzoo’s estimates, the market is going to generate $1.6 billion in revenues by 2024.
From that total, sponsorships and media rights will continue to be the top revenue streams by the end of this year. In detail, sponsorship is generating $641 million in revenues year-over-year, and media rights represent $192.6 million. Publisher fees ($126.6 million), merchandise and tickets ($66.6 million), digital ($32.3 million), and streaming ($25.1 million) complete the total.
Regarding audiences, the global total for this year is 474 million, a number that is going to increase to 577.2 by 2024. The figure is composed by both occasional viewers and e-sports enthusiasts. In terms of countries, China is the leader with the highest share of e-sports enthusiast globally.
According to the specialist, there are two main reasons for this significant growth of gaming: the Covid-19, which forced a lot of people to stay at home, what resulted in more free time to play and watch content of this type, and also mobile consuption. Mobile e-sports are a key driver force of revenue, especially in Latin America. “Mobile e-sports are a key driver force of revenue, especially in Latin America,” she indicated.
Then, the executive talked about the potential of live-streaming. “Basically, game-live-streaming is the act of recording gaming content. Due to Covid-19, the interest for live-streaming has increased considerably. In fact, from the beginning of the pandemic until now, there was a 75% growth in hours watched,” she explained.
Other notable findings from Newzoo's research were that Spanish and Portuguese broadcast are now the most popular languages after English on live-streaming platforms, and that digital and regional formats are driving the development of e-sports in 2021.