Esports: 11 Interesting Facts about the Rapidly Growing Industry

Esports: 11 Interesting Facts about the Rapidly Growing Industry
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The Growth of Esports Will Be Most Exciting For Gamers Worldwide

There are many different type of industries but Esports started rocketing very recently. Esports has begun growing in the 2000s and in around 2012/2013 it became extremely popular probably due to an increase in competitions and viewers.

It is fascinating how an industry can grow so big within just a couple of years.

I am about to give you 11 of the most interesting facts about the rapidly growing industry of Esports.

11. How many people around the world watch Esports?

A League of Legends Championship.

Many people these days think that Esports is not really that big of a deal and would not believe that a huge amount of people watch Esports. This is logical because if we take it back a few years that was actually the case. The fact that this industry grew so fast is why people didn’t even have time to react to its growth.

Truth is, an astonishing number of 71 million people watch Esports. That is a pretty huge number considering it grew dramatically over the years. If you would ask a person a few years back if they watched any kind of Esports the answer would probably be, “Esports? Never heard of it… some kind of new series?”

It is predicted as long as the sponsors keep investing in the Esports sector the amount of viewers will only increase continuously. Huge companies invest huge amounts into players. For example Samsung, one of South Korea’s largest company sponsors quite a number of StarCraft players and two League of Legends teams.

10. Working and Getting paid in the Esports Industry

Nexus has been destroyed.

The cool thing about working in the Esports industry is that it doesn’t only limit you to becoming a pro gamer in Esports. There is literally a bunch of other things you can do.Commentators, Assistants, Support personnel and many new job opportunities have been created by the Esports industry. Many positions for news casters, team managers and journalists have opened.

Moreover, to make your life easier there is a special website where they hire people for work.

All I’m saying now is; fellow gamers why not get paid doing for what you love? Well, it’s now possible.

9. Esports companies are offering good pay in the gaming industry

Joshua “Jatt” Leesman and David “Phreak” Turley

This is quite a hard subject since it’s very to find exact numbers but guess what? I have managed to find some numbers that would interest you. For example, a software engineer in the US which works for Riot would get a salary of $117,510 dollars a year. A senior engineer $156,213 dollars. A senior producer in Riot gets paid around $219,358 dollars!

This is extremely legit in my opinion for an Esports job. If you are interested to see more wages of people in different positions this is where I found the info.

You also get free tickets to watch the championships!

8. How much does a pro gamer get paid?

SKT winning the League Of Legends championship.

Probably the highest paid pro gamers are those who play Dota 2  and league of legends

Although the two are completely different in prize pools, for example this year’s Dota 2 compendium has a prize pool of a staggering $15 million this year and $10 million last year! Whereas League of Legends had a prize pool of 3 million last year. Smite has also had a championship with a prize pool of 2.6 million… Feel the difference?

I was able to find out about the highest paid Dota 2 player which turns out to be Chen, Zhihao who has made $1.2 million overall in gaming.

To get paid the best you have to be the best. This applies to life overall. So if it’s your passion take it, and make it happen. 

7. Top 5 Esports Games With Millions in Prize Money

The Global Offense 

Many people would wonder what games have the best awards for their competitors. Well this is a small list of the top 5 most awarding games and their awards!

1. Dota certainly awards their players more than any other game by having a total of 30.7 million dollars in awards in only 453 tournaments.

Some nice plays from Dota.

2.League of legends has given away 21.5 million in a total of 1459 tournaments.

LCS League Of Legends Championship.

3.StarCraft 2 with 16.5 million given away within 2864 tournaments.

StarCraft 2 mainstage teaser!

4.The legendary Counter strike putting 10.6 million in 546 tournaments

CS:GO Championship trailer.

5.Lastly we have StarCraft: Brood war which has given away 6.4 million in 281 tournaments!

StarCraft : Brrod War. The opening.

6. The biggest scandal in Esports

Promise.

One of the biggest scandals in the world of gaming, happened in South Korea. One of the most gifted gamers known by his gaming name; “Promise”had to pay the price for his coach’s faults.

Promise’s coach got into huge debts, thus he wanted to fix matches. He had asked his team to lose intentionally. 

Promise tried to commit suicide at 21 since he could not live with the thought of losing on purpose. He jumped from a 12 story building and slipped into a coma.

Promise began to recover after a serious surgery. Funds were raised for Promises medical bills by the gaming community. 

5. Esports requires more actions per minute than any other sport in the world

Incredible Speed.

Actions per minute is the total number of actions that a player can perform in a minute. This is very important, especially in games like StarCraft 2, where you might need to send dropships while placing structures and other things along the line. Speed counts. Doing as many tasks as possible in one minute might actually be the key to winning a championship.

For Asian players it’s a norm that you need to have around 200-300 apm if you want to have chances against other teams in a championship! If that sounds a lot then you are about to hear something totally insane.

The fastest player in StarCraft 2 is Losira, he performed 900 actions per minute in one of his games. I mean if I just spammed random stuff I wouldn’t be able to perform so many clicks.

4. What was Esports like 40 years ago?

Intergalactic Space War Olympics.

The first video game competition took place in the early 70’s. The technology was very limited and still people found how to compete with each other. The first tournament which was official happened in Stanford University. The game was called “intergalactic Space War Olympics”.

Even though there were no online competitions people still found ways to compete by other means. A good example is arcade games like Pacman and the king of them all, Donkey Kong. People would compete by comparing their high scores.

3.  What is The Economic Future of Esports?

A rise in revenue.

Overall the Esports industry made 194 million last year. And by 2017 it is hoping to make 456 million. Taking into account the fast growing pace of the Esports industry, in a few years from now, Esports should hit 1 billion in revenues.

This assumption was gathered from a market research performed by Newzoo and Repucom which gathered that by 2017 there will be 145 million Esport enthusiasts as compared to the previous year which totaled in 89 million.

2. Twitch TV: Whenever, wherever, you can be with Esports Together

Twitch: one of the best online streaming websites.

Now that Esports is extremely famous it is possible to watch it whenever you want, literally, WHENEVER. Even when there are no tournaments on you can just watch normal players competing.

Platforms like Twitch.tv, Justin TV always have live streams of Esports which means you are free to watch it whenever you want as well as communicate to other players while watching a game, this makes Gamers seem like family. Seem? We are a family.

1. Is Esports only for PC gamers? 

Hearthstone on Ipad.

Well this is a very interesting subject because Esports is not limited to PC gaming. There are games like hearthstone which are released on Android for example.

I personally have games on my iPad which are extremely similar to league of legends. This is also Esports. MOBA games like Vainglory for Apple products is extremely competitive, and will surely be the focus of large mobile gaming markets.

VainGlory!

Heroes of Order and Chaos is the little brother of League of Legends, the two games share extreme similarity.

Heroes of Order and Chaos

In fact Esports grew so huge that I highly doubt there is a platform on which an Esport game does not exist.

The more advanced the industry becomes the more games will be released on different platforms thus increasing the popularity of the Esport industry. Big companies are getting attracted to the whole idea of MOBA mobile gaming and are investing money in order to expand the mobile gaming market.

I think Esports could easily become as big as real sports like football or basketball. As time progresses more people are caught up into gaming. Still there are many people that think gaming is destructive to kids growing up, do you guys agree with that point of view?

 

 



Gamer Since: 2006
Favorite Genre: MOBA
Currently Playing: Everything Steam Has
Top 3 Favorite Games:Alan Wake, Bioshock Infinite, Hitman: Absolution


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nikitanag's picture

nikitanag 8 years 8 months ago

Great Article imo, gaming is becoming a massive subject in our lives. Good to know more about it.