Esports Growth research (for script)

For part of my script, I need to reference the growth of Esports through revenue streams as i feel it would be helpful to show how much the industry is worth.

The evidence I used is a free version of 'a global esports and streaming market report' by the group Newzoo, I had found the group when doing some previous research for the project but at the time I hadn't found this specific report. Their name (Newzoo) was mentioned when a news article mentioned some statistics for Esports growth. Naturally when coming around to this topic while writing my script I decided to see whether I could find some research to support my ideas.

Naturally I decided to search up 'Growth of Esports Newzoo' (knowing that they had been referenced previously) and found their website article which showcased a download for their report, so I downloaded it and decided to see what o could find.

The report file:

2021_Free_Global_Esports_and_Streaming_Market_Report_EN.pdf

Download PDF • 1.90MB

Section: Audience - Page 13

• It is a 43 page document that showcases multiple different subjects however all I'm looking for is evidence of growth within the industry, if any other information is there I will highlight it depending on it's usefulness however most of the info will be skim read

• The report has a section on their Audience revamp with them mentioning 'It is important to highlight our new independent audience group. The games livestreaming audience group comprises people who watched live-streamed gaming content at least once in the last six months, including esports and general game live streaming across all platforms. The scope of the data is live broadcast content, not VOD (video on demand) content, and the broadcast content must be game-related'

• They also talk about their primary research conducted and how they 'narrowed the input for the organized competitive gaming participants by setting a stricter boundary for the frequency of participating in organized competitive events. Participants are required to participate in esports tournaments with prize pools at least once a month, whereas in the previous methodology, participation was defined as at least once a year' further down the page they mention how they wanted to do this to to have an easier and actionable metric, this is for people who are new and approaching the amateur Esports market. Because of this, I feel as though it'd be helpful for my project and makes it easier to understand for people watching the video essay

• They also talk about how they expanded with 'Central Southern Asia as a dedicated sub-region to our forecasts. This was due to the market’s sudden increase in notable local and endemic esports activity, driven by mobile multiplayer titles such as Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (ML:BB) and PUBG Mobile.' This just establishes that overall they have considered their global factors further and understand how they should establish their data

Section: Methodology - Page 14 - 16

• On these pages they go super in depth with how they and the figures and numbers they did, I feel like going over it here would result in time wasted as this can be mainly used to evaluate a source at the end of the research post but I just wanted to highlight the different section so you can see how I went through the research

Section: Trends

• small tangent point about twitch: the report states that 'non-gaming-related category Just Chatting was the most-watched category on Twitch in 2020, coming in at nearly 1.9 billion live hours watched, while second-place League of Legends generated roughly 1.5 billion hours watched'

Section: Global overview

• The first part of this section talks about Esports revenue forecast with Newzoo predicting that by the end of 2021 there would be substantial growth with 2020 ending with around 947.1 Million in revenue growth. This was unexpectedly lower than 2019 which boasted a 10.4 million extra, bringing it to 957.5

• With their revenue streams section they reference how 'Sponsorship revenues are the foundation on which the esports market was built, so it’s no surprise that it continues to be the highest-grossing revenue stream, generating $641.0 million in 2021, or 59% of the entire market. However, this share will decrease slightly in the coming years as ticket revenues recover from COVID-19 restrictions and esports organizers and teams continue to diversify' they believe that this, along with previous points mentioned in the report is 'another sign of a healthy market'

• Image highlighting current revenue streams up to the point the report was made:

• With lockdown many new viewers of E-sports were made with a large portion coming from the live streaming market, this is referenced in the report 'lockdown measures led to many new viewers last year—and will continue to do so into 2021.' However with this also comes with the fact that other factors took the forefront in different areas, the report states that 'audience numbers were most affected by growth markets across the Middle East and Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America, whose ongoing infrastructure developments are empowering resident'

• Many other factors are mentioned along the ones mentioned previously including 'the strong audience growth is mobile, which has entered the upper echelon of esports and is driving demand in markets like India and Brazil.' it also could be related to the idea that according to NewZoo 'Esports is also getting more visible on live-streaming platforms in the East and West alike, increasing discoverability' another obvious point is the idea of 'The interruption of physical sports last year, as well as continued strong cross-promotion between games and esports, also catalyzed demand'

• An image showcasing audience growth within 2019-2020:

I decided to only include the completed years data and not the forecasts as I believe that while they are useful in this regard it doesn't hold credibility hen tracking growth. Especially with the idea that anything could happen within future years (example covid-19)

That completes the bulk of useful information within the report for this topic specifically, i may include other figures in my script which I may decide to mention within a later blog post but for now i feel as this research can serve to highlight my point

For evaluation i feel as though it may be a good idea to take a look at the report and see what groups they may have partnered with to get their information and look at the way they may have a specifically gathered data (if that option is possible)

• as mentioned previously in the report their is a section on their methodology which i think would be interesting to look at as an evaluation point, in their methodology section they talk about Three Key high-level metrics for each market 'esports enthusiasts, occasional viewers, and revenues' NewZoo define a market as 'a country, region, or other territory'

• They talk about how they get data on what they refer to as Esports enthusiasts and occasional viewers they talk about how it is 'largely based on our proprietary primary consumer research, which continues to form the basis of our detailed analysis of consumers, esports, and games'

• Newzoo reference that in 2020 they 'carried out research in more than 32 countries/markets, covering more than 60,000 consumers' this vastly differs from the numbers that they say they had in 2009 with 'six countries/markets'

• They make the statement that in 2021 they are the largest consumer research program, while those may be bold claims, it could be rooted in some truth as there isn't a lot of consumer based research around this topic due to how new the industry is

• They go on to mention their video game live streaming audience and how they have 'based on similar metrics and inputs as our esports audience numbers' They mention that in addition they 'review these numbers based on our own viewership data and that collected from different streaming platforms to validate our estimates'

• They also talk about their E-sports enthusiast and occasional viewers ratios that are gained from the research previously mentioned and how they 'are projected against the online population, using population, internet penetration, and economic growth metrics'

• They bring up their revenue forecasts and data which they say is focused on multiple sources including an a predictive E-sports market model, incorporating data from macroeconomic (focuses on the performance of economies – changes in economic output, inflation, interest and foreign exchange rates, and the balance of payments) and census data, primary consumer research, data provided by our industry data partners, public event data for viewership and attendees, media reports, and third-party research. (this is lifted from the report as well)

• All of this also includes data from actuals from leading teams and companies in the industry. In accounting, actuals are the recorded revenues and expenditures at a given point in time (as compared to a budget, which is only an estimate of revenues and expenditures)

These are all highly respected teams and organizations, so that combined with how open they are about their methodology makes me believe that as a source they are trustworthy to use