Cultivating the Esports Fan — How Esports is Following in Sports’ Footsteps
With the future projections for esports audiences starting to rival traditional sports and a projected industry value of $1.5 million by 2020, many brands are turning to esports sponsorship as being the next big thing. The 400 million strong esports audience is aged 21–35, mostly male and with higher than average income. It is a very valuable audience for potential advertisers.
With traditional sports, fans have a lot of opportunities to buy merchandise such as team jerseys and other licensed products. According to KSV eSports founder, Kent Wakeford, speaking at the GamesBeat Summit in California, an average sports fan spends $50 per year. With esports, the average is $5.
This represents a 10x opportunity for investors and consequently a lot of money is being put into live arenas and enhancing the live experience for fans. The physical experience and cultivation of “fan culture” will be a very important factor in maximizing revenue for esports franchises.
This is one of the reasons for KSV’s investment in the Overwatch League and Seoul Dynasty. Overwatch has city-based teams and is global. Like with traditional sports teams, it allows esports companies to focus on the people in and around the city and build something that ingrains itself in the city’s esports fabric. Geo-location of the teams is enabling fans to closer identify with their local team and share a core identity with other local fans. By building fan loyalty, esports franchises are hoping get closer to traditional sports in terms of fan spending.
Live events are thought are becoming increasingly popular as they attract more investment. Last years League of Legends World Championship Final, In Beijing, sold out 40,000 tickets in minutes, and had 60 million watching live online. The event won the first ever Sports Emmy for Live Graphic Design.
BlizzCon, the flagship event for Blizzard Entertainment, held in Anaheim, sells out tickets at $200 each in seconds with 90,000 in the queue. Nate Nanzer, commissioner of Overwatch League at Activision Blizzard, compares live esports to watching live sports as a way of bringing new fans in. “It’s more fun to watch competition when you’re there and you’re connected to other fans and you have a shared experience.” For many, experiencing a live exports event can cause a kind of epiphany that converts casual viewers into fans.
Support by sports players, like LA Galaxy star Zlatan Ibrahimovic who supports LA Valiants, is also adding credibility and helping fan culture spread from regular sports to esports. The increasing numbers of pro sports players and ex-players who are buying teams or becoming involved in esports in other ways is also adding to the credibility of esports.
All of this is great for the industry but is presents problems for marketers looking to get into esports as a way of promoting their products. Not least is the complexity and fragmentation of the marketplace and deciding how best to allocate their resources.
EIPlatform’s data driven marketing platform will provide a solution to this by allowing brands of all levels access to the entire esports ecosphere. Blockchain technology allows complete transparency of data, allowing for informed choices in the distribution of marketing budgets. From the other side, smaller local tournaments and teams will be able to benefit from the increased investment in the industry, currently only available at the top levels.
Please read more about the EIPlatform.
The second pre-sale phase of the EMI token sale is launching from November 26 until November 30, 2018. With the vision of the EIP project and the growth of esports, this investment is a valuable opportunity. We welcome any questions you may have.
