The Future Of Esports And Fan Engagement In The Metaverse

There’s no denying that esports is huge as the stats reveal.

1. There are currently about 222.9m esports enthusiasts in the entire world (Newzoo).
2. Out of the entire world population of 7.79bn people, around 1.9bn (23%) are aware of what esports is (Newzoo).
3. The entire esports audience sat at 495m at the end of 2020, with over half of those only being occasional viewers (Newzoo).
4. The world’s largest esports tournament prize pool is the Dota 2 International, with its available winnings sitting at $30m in 2019 (Valve)
5. Mobile esports has spiked in countries like Southeast Asia, India, and Brazil in 2020, expanding its market dramatically. (Newzoo)
6. The League of Legends World Championships 2020 brought in a record breaking 139m hours in viewership, and peaked at around 3.8m viewers. (DotEsports)
7. In 2020 alone, there was $623.9m worth of sponsorship investments made into esports, which has risen by 17.2% in 2019. (Newzoo)
8. Live esports events brought in around 1209.6m viewers across 25 titles, with League of Legends topping the list. (Newzoo)
9. Whilst esports is continuing to grow bigger each year, physical sports are still quite far ahead in revenue. The European football market is estimated to be worth about £25.1bn in 2020. (Deloitte)
10. The esports industry is expected to generate revenues of over $1556.7m globally by 2023. (Newzoo)

There were an estimated 42,000 attendees to live esports events in the UK alone in 2019 — including events such as ESL One Birmingham 2019. Of these total attendees, approximately 5%, or 2,100 attendees, originated from outside the UK.

According to Grand View Research and others the global esports market size was valued at USD 1.1 billion in 2019 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24.4% from 2020 to 2027. Total esports viewership is expected to grow at a 9% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2019 and 2023, up from 454 million in 2019 to 646 million in 2023, per Insider Intelligence estimates. That puts the esports audience on pace to nearly double over a six-year period, as the 2017 audience stood at 335 million.

The increasing audience reach and engagement activities, formidable investments, rising live streaming of games, and increasing infrastructure for the league tournaments are key factors driving the market growth. There are lucrative opportunities for game developers, gamers, influencers, brand sponsors and event organisers. Millennials are considering esports as a professional career owing to the increase in popularity of the gaming tournaments, impressive international prize pools, streaming revenues, and one-to-one sponsorships. Moreover, universities and colleges are starting a dedicated esports curriculum to develop skilled professionals.

So how would esports transition into the metaverse and what other opportunities could await?

For a start, the removal of physical events or a move to an immersive hybrid model would open up esports fan engagement to completely different levels. Instead of attending a tournament arena to watch the players, you could enter a virtual environment that placed you within the play environment itself. Rather than spectate from a view of the player’s screen imagine yourself inside the game itself and then watching from any camera angle or being able to move within the environment itself. This would work especially well for FPS games or 3D games built-in Unreal for example.

Metaverse tournaments could virtualise the entire experience from within a physical event taking place in real-time. What if you could watch from a browser (nobody wants to be limited to a pure virtual reality experience when the audience numbers are so high to tap into) which simulated the actual event, only the players were motion captured in real-time and displayed as something else — a bear, a dragon, a bird, a cat….your favourite brand of sneaker. It’s quirky but entirely possible.

On top of this, a virtual tournament of this type would open up brand sponsorship opportunities beyond what’s already possible with televised events. Like I’ve said in a previous blog, dynamic and volumetric advertising and brand placement would be entirely possible and unobtrusive, completely removing the need for ad breaks.

And then there are the games themselves. Esports organisers are constantly seeking to turn different games into a competitive sport worth watching. I spoke with Adel Barry, Executive Producer at Esports TV who told me about what they’re planning to do with Unified Weapons Master, a hybrid martial art developed by the Australian start-up firm Chiron Global using embedded sensors in a gladiator-style, carbon-fibre armoured suit. Using a motion capture suit under the armour itself in combination with Unreal Engine they reimagine and virtualise the two fighters in a plain combat arena into something that’s not unlike Mortal Kombat. The video below is really cool because if you can imagine being transported to ancient Rome in the gladiator arena as a spectator, and watching two fighters who look exactly like Roman gladiator champions then you can get the type of atmosphere, viewing figures and sponsorship opportunities this could generate.

Esports is already a huge market. The metaverse could completely revolutionise fan engagement and spectator experiences, sponsorship opportunities and transform different types of games into competitive sports as never before.

Is it esports? Is it vsports? Is it metasports? Who knows, but it’s exciting.