The Future of Sports and Streaming (Part 2 — esports)
Recently I touched upon the changing demographics of viewers (https://blog.oddnetworks.com/different-viewing-habits-of-a-new-generation-of-content-consumers-b3d506962bea) and more so on the sport viewing / streaming evolution. While watching traditional sports existed long before OTT and streaming even was a thought another sport came about during the digital age.
e-sport
plural noun: esports
- a multiplayer video game played competitively for spectators, typically by professional gamers.
- “millions of people enjoy watching e-sports”
Esports applications are going to be some of the biggest money makers in the OTT space. Just looking at the success they have had in platforms like Twitch and to a lesser extent Youtube Gaming, esports are already a dominant content medium on the web. I have touched upon the future of traditional sports on cable and the eventual move to OTT.
Cable networks have spent billions to retain the rights of the major sports leagues in the US. The NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL as well as major college sports are all owned by cable networks. This has been a boon for the sports leagues as players and owners have seen record revenues and salaries.
To justify these massive contracts a huge population of viewers is required. To date they have been able to show up but as the exodus of cable viewers and never users grows that population is slowly dwindling. At the same time the shared revenue models will someday be replaced by proprietary OTT networks where the leagues go straight to the consumer.
OTT networks do not have the large revenue shares and have allowed Niche sports already to see success. Esports on the other hand might have an opportunity that goes beyond either. Without the long term contracts and a massive audience they have the opportunity to bring in the millions of viewers with the straight to consumer model.
Some of my colleagues at ODD Networks were the first to introduce me to the massiveness of the OTT space. In previous lives they had been involved in work on AAA video games and introduced me to the likes of League of Legends and Rocket League. I have always been into traditional sports. I would watch baseball games as a child with my grandfather and grew up in a college sports town, Syracuse, where a football or basketball game was what everyone in the town would look forward to each night. While there are millions of sports fans out there, there is also a large number of folks that like sports but also like games as well as those that simply like games.
Let’s look at some stats from a few years ago in a market that has only gotten much larger in recent years. League of Legends a product of Riot games is from what I know the largest game in the esports space. Each year they have a World Championship that includes live viewing at major stadiums around the world and allows other viewers to watch online. These numbers are straight from Riot in 2013.
“Over 32 million fans watched SK Telecom T1 earn the Summoner’s Cup in front of a sold-out Staples Center. At peak, more than 8.5 million fans were watching at the same time. To put those numbers in context, the Season 2 World Championship was watched by 8.2 million fans, with 1.1 million watching at the same time. In short, we’re beyond humbled by your passion for and commitment to League of Legends.”
Furthermore the most recently In 2016, the finals were watched by 43 million people, with a peak concurrent viewership of 14.7 million viewers, breaking 2015’s finals’ viewer records.
To put this in perspective lets see how this matches up with the traditional sports leagues that are found on cable and some pay walled streaming apps.
NBA: 20.1 million viewers
NHL: 2.7 million viewers
NFL: 111.9 million viewers
Football is still king but looking at the other sports championships League of Legends beat out the NBA by more than double and beat out the NHL by 15x. What’s even more impressive is the amount of time people spend on networks like Twitch watching the professional events from major games.
Combined that is 227.5M hours of streams watched in one month. Overall when including all esports streams from both the pro’s and the average gamer there were over 3.2 billion hours streamed over the past 10 months, an average of 320M!!!! Twitch has 100 million users and to some degree has become a cable network just for streamers. They have a built in audience but have shown that esports are as legit as any other sports league and should get the recognition it deserves.
That was a bit of a long explanation for why esports are legit but with those numbers I felt I needed to show the realized potential and growth a market that didn’t exist a decade ago has already seen.
What I find more interesting is that the larger games have signed exclusive contracts with some of the major streaming networks like Twitch. This tactic reminds me a lot of how the traditional sports leagues made their way from struggling in the 90’s to billion dollar TV deals. Quickly though these major brands are looking to take their games straight to their viewers. Riot has signed a deal with MLBAM while others are hinted at looking at having their own streaming sites.
More leagues are popping up each day. With a world audience instead of localized ones like the traditional sports there are billions of viewers out there that can watch anytime. The pros themselves have used twitch and other platforms to build massive audiences that they are already starting to monetize. I predict over the next few years esports leagues will have more viewers than all traditional sports combined. The streamers themselves will have personalized applications that will be worth millions in subscriber value as well.
The esports revolution isn’t happening it already did and many just didn’t notice until it was here.
If you want to see more of what we are up go to https://oddnetworks.com/
Or if you want to hear our story — An Odd Platform — The Story of Odd Networks
https://blog.oddnetworks.com/an-odd-platform-the-story-of-odd-networks-abaf3b8669ef
