Esports is no longer considered to be the nerds’ and geeks’ hobby and a waste of time. They have become a multi-million dollar industry where players can build careers and earn a fortune.
We’ve come across an interesting infographic put together by NJ Games that sparked our interest with the jaw-dropping numbers regarding the amount of money involved in esports.
Esports has seen a continued revenue growth ever since its humble beginnings. For example, in 2012, the total global revenue was “only” $130 million, whereas it is predicted that this number will reach $1.385 billion by 2021. The chances are that it will surpass this amount.
Sources of Revenue
In 2018, the total revenue of esports was around $906 million. There are several sources of revenue streams in the industry, the biggest of which are sponsorships (40%).
Some of the biggest sponsors include companies such as Intel, Coca-Cola, Mercedes Benz, Red Bull, and others. The rest of the revenue is acquired from advertising, game publisher fees, media rights, merchandise, and tickets.
However, esports also earns a lot of money indirectly through various streaming services. Esports streaming has become an industry of its own, as the most popular streamers have millions of viewers and earn millions of dollars.
The most popular website for esports streaming is definitely Twitch. It accounts for 1.8% of the total internet traffic and 43% of all live-video streaming traffic. In just one month after it was launched, Twitch already had 8 million unique users. Today, that number is 55 million.
YouTube is the next in line when it comes to streaming, but falls far behind Twitch. Nonetheless, the monthly active streamers have grown by 36.6% for YouTube Live in 2018.
These numbers seem incredible today, but several years from now we will be looking at them as the new normal. As a result, the esports industry is becoming unstoppable. If you need more evidence, take a look at the rest of the data in the infographic below.
