Los Angeles the capital of eSports
Video Games is an industry commanding increased respect within the larger entertainment industry. Electronic sports (aka esports or competitive gaming), on the other hand, is its own creature — a billion-dollar giant sleeping beneath LA’s surface. The NFL made $12B in 2015 and hopes to get revenues close to $25B in only a few years, seemingly unmatchable in terms of sports profit power. I know that everyone reading this article knows about the National Football League, but have you heard of “League of Legends?” You probably have — it’s that game you or your son/daughter play. The learning curve is high, the characters varied, and LoL, as it is better known, is the biggest esport on the planet. While that distinction used to belong to Korea’s StarCraft league, LA’s Riot Games has blown the professional Starcrafters out of the water. South Korea’s infatuation with Blizzard appears to be on the wane, while League of Legends continues to gain serious steam at home and abroad.
The three biggest esports right now are League of Legends, Starcraft, and Call of Duty. Those games are published by Riot Games, Blizzard, and Activision, respectively. All three are based in Los Angeles. When I started Activision, I wanted to make LA into a major video game hub. Now, college leagues are popping up. Stadiums are selling out. League lays claim to tens of millions of daily players and close to 67 million a month. The prizes are whopping — $1M to $10M for a winning team to split among the players. The sponsorships are rolling in as players make six figures a year. And even more revolutionary is the fact the whole thing is free to play.
Esports has a huge advantage over a previously established (some would say institutional) sport like football, namely the medium’s accessibility. League of Legends might exist in the Staples Center, but it also exists on laptops around the world, on sites like Twitch and on illegal streams. League has the potential to be on every device at any time, while the NFL keeps itself constrained to cable. One third of America watched the Super Bowl. I see no reason why one third of the world won’t one day watch the largest esport tournament.
