Understanding the esports ecosystem

Broadcasters aren’t the only demographic trying to figure out what impact esports might have on their industry: based on a number of very well attended sessions at the recent SportsPro Live event in London, professional sport is too.

For the benefit of novices, speakers agreed that the term “esports” is not entirely useful. Introducing a panel discussion on where the esports and gaming business is heading, Ian Smith Integrity Commissioner at the Esports Integrity Coalition described the term as a slightly misleading umbrella term covering a variety of games that are lumped together in the same way that the Olympics lumps together 26 or 28 different sports. “Just like the Olympics, we have the 100m men’s final at one end watched by 1.2 billion people and we have synchronized swimming at the other end watched by 12 people. Esports is exactly like that,” said Smith.

Smith placed Counter-Strike Global Offensive (CS: GO), League of Legends and Defense of the Ancients 2 (Dota2) at the Usain Bolt end of the esports spectrum, with Overwatch and Rainbow 6 being in a second tier not too far behind while other games such as Starcraft, which was massive until a few years ago, are in decline. Each game has…