It might not be an exaggeration to say that esports tournaments enjoy viewership thet can be considered on par with actual games. Games like League of Legends had reported 100 million active monthly users in 2016.
Defining E-Sports
Electronic sports, or e-sports as they are commonly abbreviated, or in essence, video games played between teams or by individual players. Both online and off-line sports competitions take place all around the world, attracting both players and audiences alike. This fierce competition has given rise to a new breed of professional gamers who make it their bread and butter to play these games. Winners are quite likely to earn massive financial rewards.
In addition to the financial rewards, the players also receive fame and recognition like the usual outdoor games period the video game and the esport industry has been dominated by a handful of games like League of Legends, DOTA2, Call of Duty, Counterstrike, Hearthstone, and StarCraft.
Talking commercials
Among all the names listed above, DOTA2 is one of the most famous and the most recognized. There are over 600 tournaments that take place every year and the prize money amounts to over US$60 million. Streaming platforms like Twitch and YouTube facilitate more than 800 million viewing hours. It is expected that the total audience for esports will grow to about 500000,000 viewers and the revenues are expected to breach the $1 billion mark before the end of this decade.
The coronavirus crisis has only contributed to the growth of esports. Since most of the tournaments have been restricted for keeping up with social distancing measures, electronic gaming is the only possible avenue for competitive entertainment. Interestingly, the engagement leans more towards males with the participation of more than 85%.
The biggest contributor for revenue for esports segment is the sponsorships. In 2019, sponsorships contributed to about $359 million, followed by advertising that amounted to $174 million. Following closely on the heels of advertising, media rights were sold for about $161 million, and game publishing fees were charged at $116 million. As an auxiliary stream of revenue, merchandising and tickets accounted for $96 million. Some expert analysis of the online and the sporting industry have projected that esports will soon become one among the top five sprots on this planet!
The variety
On the surface, esports might seem quite monotonous – we cannot visualize anything more than a person sitting in front of a computer and typing voraciously on the keyboard and clicking the mouse. There might be instances when the gamer uses the console controllers but for a normal viewer, it all seems the same.
However, the esport industry is a lot more than this monotony. There are different flavors of games like multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), first-person shooters fighting games card games, and real-time strategy games.
League of Legends is a multiplayer online battlefield game that is available to play free of cost. It has quite a lot of competitions and the prize pool exceeds $6 million.
Counterstrike, launched in 2012 has gained quite a lot of popularity in the United Kingdom. It is a coordinated first-person shooter game and it as a prize pool of about $1 million.
Call of Duty is a first-person shooter, and it was initially available on the Xbox. There are quite a lot of games in this series and gaming leagues around the United Kingdom, North America, Latin America and Australia feature this game.
The business prospect
Organizing an esports tournament it's quite a lucrative business idea. It is, with the growing popularity of esports, an ideal form of investment because whatever you spend is going to come back to you in terms of advertising and sponsorships. To ensure that you get your share of gamers participating in your tournament it is important to market your arena.
For any form of digital advertising, in most cases, a website is the point of culmination. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to have an intuitive and informative website.
Esports Tournament website development
It is to be remembered that when a user looks at a website, they do not care about the technology but only about what they consume! There are different ways in which you can build your esports website.
WordPress is a world-renowned content management system that helps you build websites as simple as posting your updates on Facebook. The lavish inventory of themes and plug-ins makes it extremely easy for you to build your website. You will need to buy your domain and find a proper hosting partner. While WordPress offers its own hosting services, it is recommended that you use the hosting services provided by standard providers like GoDaddy and Bluehost. Alternatively, you can also consider using the Amazon Web Server cloud and the Google Cloud for hosting your website.
If you are more of a purist, you can also consider availing the services of an esports website development company. It might not be efficient in terms of cost and time but it surely gives you a lot of flexibility and uniqueness. You might not want to bank on a probability that there might be a website that looks exactly like yours because of the universal availability of plug-ins and themes. You will have to take into consideration factors like your target audience, the game tournaments that you will be conducting, and if you will be building your gaming platform from scratch or if you will be using a white label solution.
Irrespective of your website being built on a CMS or custom-built, you will need to ensure that you have the aspects like the wireframe, design, development, APIs, testing, and quality assurance figured out.
Conclusion
Esports presents an interesting option for entertainment for the enthusiasts and an exciting and lucrative business opportunity for an aspiring entrepreneur. There are different kinds of esport software that you can create. Some of them include esport collaboration, tournament management, mobile applications, team management, and even white-label solutions.
