There should be more black people in E-Sports
Recently I got into competitive gaming. I know right? What is so great about competitive gaming that black people should be doing it? Well, why not? We play all these games just as much people from other demographics do but somehow you don’t seem to see many black people playing games professionally. It doesn’t differ much from traditional sports, they earn the same, train hard, become famous within their community and whatever else comes with being a professional athlete.
So here is your second question: Can you even support yourself as a gamer? Yes, yes you can.
Competitive gaming has become a huge lucrative industry. In 2017 alone we are expected see a viewership of 145m regular and another 190m casual viewers, which rivals some more traditional sports such as volleyball and ice hockey. The industry is set to be providing a close to half a billion dollar in revenue next year.
In some particular e-sports such as Dota 2, league of legends and counter strike prize pools are known to regularly break the $1m mark, some even the multi millions. Dota 2 just recently had the international, which boasted a prize pool of over $20m for a SINGLE tournament with the winning team taking away just over $9m. Yeah, you read that right, $9m between a couple 20 something year olds. And should you not play those games, there are many other games which have competitive leagues/ tournaments. Call of Duty, H1Z1, Overwatch, FIFA & Rocket League all have large prize pool tournaments, with some still going through a period of growth. Through this growing viewership in e-sports it has allowed many gamers to strike lucrative sponsorship deals with different brands wanting a piece of what is yet to come. Many athletes find themselves being offered sponsorship from energy drink companies such as red bull and gaming equipment giants who want to directly target their market.
To provide the consistency many people will need to continue their career in gaming, organisations pay their players monthly salaries as any other sports organisations would. This and the possibility of growing a huge social media following, especially on YouTube and Twitch makes for a very hefty monthly payday.
But if the monetary benefits are not enough for you to be convinced as to why there should be more black people in e-sports. Go watch an e-sports tournament yourself and the first thing you noticed is that we are way too underrepresented. Young black viewers have no one to look up to and no one to take as an example and I just think there should be a great black role model in all sorts of industries. I just know that there will be that that one black kid who will watch these tournaments and have the dream to be an e-sports player but because they see no one that even remotely reminds them of their self, they may believe that this dream will stay a dream.
I don’t think that this is a racism issue but more of us just not consideration a career in this field. You know when someone finds out they are fast they consider a career in sprinting, when someone is good at basketball they consider a career in basketball or their friends recommend it or whatever. However for some reason this isn’t the case with gaming and I think that’s just something that has come with the stigma attached to it.
So yeah, I’m not saying people should suddenly all become pro gamers but I just think some more of our people should consider it.
