Where do you see the Esports scene in 10years?
I think it will be much bigger than now, with more money investing and more players. Today almost every kid plays games (we used to play more outside) and can get picked by an org academy and success..before wasnt like that. The scene has changed and its gonna change even more in 10years. I see Esports being even an Olympic sport one day.
Franchising is a thing you know? Which means leagues?
The problem with esports is broadcasting times at the moment. There is no definite time for a game to end so that hurts broadcasting on television.
Considering how just 10 years ago, people were lucky to be making past $25k in a tournament, any large esport now have prize pools upwards in the millions. It might be a stretch, but in 15-20 years, it could very well overtake the industry.
It will never take over Football, it may be able to take over lesser sports but to have half the world watch an esports tournament won’t ever happen. These esports also need to score a massive sponsorship to support prizepools like football. For example winning the premier league is £150m iirc, which no company will ever put up for a gaming competition until it has a strong revenue like the premier league where £500k+ is spent each game on tickets alone
Its also prob unfeasible too without making communities of some games mad, like you can realistically have like 4 games max tbh, also it opens the door to stuff like card games, chess, board games etc, which are extremely difficuilt games dont get me wrong, but none of them fit the Olympics (An Olympics of like mental sports which would include esports would be pretty cool tho)
I see the esport scene being a lot larger with the mobile gaming space being the biggest by far(outside of NA/EU). I think the number of esports might drop a bit cause of economic viability, but the strong ones like Valorant, League and COD will grow and be just as big revenue wise as leagues like the MLS
I see it getting bigger, but I also see myself becoming more detached because I'm getting older. I've seen so many esports scenes by now, that it feels like patterns are repeating, certain archetypes emerge, the fundamentals never change really, they just get a different flavor in terms of game and players.
It's like having a child, watching them grow up and die and going through that over and over again. I know weird metaphor, but all I can come up with.
MOBAs will be completely dead in the west, if you compare MOBA playerbase share and viewership share in the West from 5 years ago to today it has declined a lot. LCS for example, its viewership has completely stagnated and is also losing viewers slowly. Dota 2 has also completely died in NA. This would be less of a worry if there was some rival MOBA that was gaining players/viewers instead of LoL and DotA 2,but the genre apart from DotA and LoL is completely dead.
People in this thread are fundamentally misunderstanding what drives the growth of esports. Esports is driven by game publishers who are solely interested in using professional tournaments to sustain interest in their games. VCT is a marketing tool for Riot. Sustained interest in Valorant due to esports competitions = more in-game cosmetics sold. Riot does not earn anything on esports as a sector specifically (sponsorships and partnerships just help to lessen costs). In fact, very few segments of esports are profitable.
So, to answer the question of where esports will be in 10 years you are better to ask yourselves which games will be popular and whether they lend themselves to professional competitions. There will never be this magical moment where esports is suddenly recognized alongside conventional sports. It comes down to whether there are wealthy publishers incentivized to support their games with massive competitions. Without that, there is no esports. Well, there would be esports, but it would exist in a much smaller capacity, as it did back in the early 2000s before publishers suddenly realized its value as a marketing tool and took control.
Credentials - I am involved in market research.
Yep, I agree. The point I'm trying to make is that there is unlikely to be some big regulatory body interested in suddenly making esports more than it already is. The success of esports is just down to whether publishers care enough to invest. If they see it as a good advertisement for the game, there will be an esports scene. But make no mistake: the competitions themselves are not what publishers care about. The people who are making esports happen (the publishers) don't care about legitimizing the practice of playing video games professionally. They care about whether incorporating esports into the game's marketing strategy will increase sales.
Well, you can say publishers drive it to some degree, but the game itself has to be interesting enough that people will watch.
Look at Overwatch and how much money they poured into it and still flopped hard. The Riot model of franchising teams and having control over their own scene seems to be working, but I don't think it will for another 10 years. That philosophy in itself is pretty much opposite of why people watch competitive games, who will be the audience that will still watch 10 years from now.
Look at CS and how little Valve has done and yet it's still one of the biggest eSports scene through last 20 years.
Yeah, that is the one flaw with esports. A game won't stay mainstream forever, and publishers are going to abandon it after awhile and move on to other things.
But the esport scene is also driven by the improvement in technology as it continues to involve itself with the people of society. 15 years ago, no one expected people to have pocket computers and now practically everyone does. The industry's success is also built off of how fast tech improves (console and pc etc) and how accessible it is to everyone. Part of the problem right now is accessibility, as hardware requirements inhibit people from playing games they would want to play. If it is more accessible, it means more players, which incentivizes publishers to push out more content or invest more into their game.
Granted, diminishing marginal utility actually applies (more frequently) to esports unlike physical sports, so something needs to change in order for the industry to even make it to the stage Sports currently have.
Idk, even games seemingly abandoned by their devs like Melee and sorta CSGO are still pretty big, and those are old ass games, 1.6 was 1999 and even ig you just wanna talk about Global Offensive thats still 2012, and Melee is 2001 (Tho not as big mostly cuz fighting games arent as popular), hell even League is 2009, tho that game gets updates every like 2 weeks so i mean its def not abandoned tho, but still older games
True, but I can't see the longevity for some of those games lasting another 10 years.
Melee is a special case because people who play melee, generally speaking, hate the newer models and find the newer games just not competitive which is understandable.
CSGO for the longest time was the staple for the FPS sport and now that Valorant is here, it actually has "true" competition.
Unlike IRL sports, esports viewerbase consists only of people who plays the game. Nobody watched Valorant esports who doesn't play it. The majority of people who watch IRL sports dont actively play them. Individual video games have a short lifespan and when people get tired of the game the will stop watching the esport. Since the esports which people watch will switching with no game likely being popular for more than a decade or two it will be difficult for any games esports scene to reach the popularity of a normal sports.
E-Sports in 10 years will be great. But that all depends on what games remain relevant during that period. CSGO might still be a dominant esport in the long run due to the fact that it still has a good fanbase backing it since 2014 and the game has boomed during the pandemic (especially among Chinese investors)
If Valorant plays their cards right and makes sure that the game isn't just a competition between EU and NA and get Korea involved more, then Valorant can easily be a dominant force in Esports, and could potentially be the face of FPS shooters in the next 10 years.
MOBAs need a remodel since DoTA 2 and LoL hae been the bipolar forces of the genre since forever. No new MOBAs want to enter the ring and contest them since they're afraid they won't make it, and both games are good and drag in a lot of viewers but it seriously needs something new to pump some new blood
COD, sadly, I don't see staying as a contender in Esports much longer, the majority of the fanbase only plays the game, and they don't care about any team in the league other than the Atlanta FaZe, and the game is turning into a game you want to play casually with friends, not a game you take seriously
Fortnite and other BR games, do I have to say this? They're dying or dead, probably not even making it past the 5-year mark other than Apex and PUBG due to the intense popualrity of the games and because the fans are dedicated
For the games that last the test of time, they will boom and prosper as investors realize that esports means money in the bank, and it will only get bigger
For the games that tried but failed to remain popular, but failed to make it, GG.
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