EsportsGrace

Stats Esports is a lucrative and rapidly expanding sector. It’s predicted that the total esports audience will grow from 395m to 580m (2016-2021)< In 2017, European audiences reached 77million. By 2021, its expected that a quarter of the world’s population will be aware of esports.

Money-wise, the global esports market is set to grow from $630m (2017) to $1.6bn (2022). As a result, its no surprise that U.S. media conglomerates such as Disney, Comcast, and AT&T are looking into content rights for esport. South Korean esports network OGN announced in 2018 that it planned to invest $100million to broadcast esports events in North America. 74% of the industry is sponsorship and advertising compared to 9% being prize money To understand the scale, the total prize money of all esports events held in 2017 reached $112 million, breaking the $100 million mark for the first year.

By the 3rd financial quarter of 2017, over 100 brands had invested into esports.

Major Esports Events

Worldwide

• 2018 ESL One Hamburg, Germany
  • Largest DOTA 2 tournament in Europe. Universal Music Group and Enter Records played critical role in the live entertainment of the event, with the opening ceremony of the grand final being a "a complete audiovisual experience, with pyrotechnics and a musical performance by TheFatRat”

• 2018 ESL One Katowice & Intel Extreme Masters Katowice (joint double weekend event in Poland)
  • 169,000 in-person spectators across the weekends, 2.2million online viewers.

• 2017 ESL Intel Extreme Masters Season XI, Poland
  • This was the largest esports event in Europe with a physical attendance of 173,000, 100k more than the Superbowl in 2016.

• 2017 League of Legends World Championship, China
  • 80 million viewers tuned in to watch the semifinal round between teams SK telecom T1 and Royal Never Give Up. Final was held in the world-famous 2008 Olympic Bird’s Nest stadium.

UK

• 2018 ESL One Birmingham
  • Meanwhile in the UK, tickets for ESL One Birmingham sold out within 6 hours of release and achieved a total of 3,356,594 views. Partners and sponsors included Mercedes-Benz, Vodafone, Alienware and Intel.

Cultural Esports Events

• Hyperplay
  • Asia’s first esports music festival, held in Singapore in Aug 2018. Admission was completely free. Featured League of Legends competition with artists such as Nick Jonas, Alesia Cara, & CL.

• DreamHack
  • 2015 saw 192k visit DreamHack events.

• Blizzcon
  • 2017 saw over 35k attendees, with Muse performing at the closing ceremony.

• eSports & Music Festival Hong Kong (2019)
  • 3 day festival with tournaments, games, and music.

• Insomnia

• More: 4 festivals dedicated specifically to the combination of esport and music have taken place or been announced so far this year: Hyperplay by Riot Games and MTV, PLAY Festival by Insomniac, the ICBC e-Sports & Music Festival by the Hong Kong Tourism Board and the Harrisburg University Esports Festival by the eponymous university and iHeartMedia