Traditionally marked as an unorthodox ‘sport’, eSports is short for ‘electronic sports’ and often represents the technical execution of game-related tactics on computer, mobile or console games at the highest level. Some games require careful planning and tactics while others require sheer skill and reaction time. Regardless, these all fall under the category of eSports as long as the game itself drives in enough viewers to generate revenue for a particular league.

In essence, every professional game belongs to its corresponding eSports league, meaning that any high-level online video game leagues and competitors are included in ‘eSports’. In this article in particular, we’ll discuss the rise of eSports across the globe, alluding to what caused such an uprise in popularity as well as how eSports leagues generate their revenue.

Competitive Gaming Grows in Popularity

It wasn’t until the early 2000s that the technology and surrounding environments would allow for competitive video game tournaments and leagues to occur. One of the industry’s biggest turning points was the World Cyber Games and Electronic Sports World Cup. For the Cyber games, 17 different countries would compete across four separate games; Quake II Arena, FIFA 2000, Age of Empires II and Starcraft: Brood War. At the time, the prize pool was only $20,000, showing just how early in the development stages these kinds of leagues were.

As these events rapidly gained more viewers and players over the next couple of years, the MLG (Major League Games) was erected in the year 2002 and is currently considered one of the world’s top hosts in eSports. Soon after in 2006, Halo 2 was the first competitive game in eSports to be broadcast on TV. Even though this was a huge step for the gaming industry, it wouldn’t be until a site called Twitch.tv became active in 2011, allowing individuals to livestream their gameplay to anyone who logged into the site. By the end of 2011, the game known as League of Legends hosted its first World Championship, completely selling out in 2013, possibly due to an influx of fans since the creation of Twitch.

By 2014, Amazon Inc. bought the rights to Twitch.tv, allowing them to implement their method of acquiring potential viewers and involve them in future eSports events where many eyes would be watching. Today, the eSports industry covers a vast selection of games, including first-person shooters, multiplayer online battle arenas, fighting games, sports games and more, all of which are continuously rising in popularity very quickly.

eSports Revenue Through the Roof!

As a relatively new industry, you can expect a lot of projections for eSports for the next century. While there isn’t a lot of data before 2017, we do know that from then on, the eSports industry has risen rapidly, and we expect the electronic sports leagues to continue to generate more and more revenue than it had in previous years. By 2021, the entire eSports market was valued at $1.14 billion in revenue which saw a steady increase in 2022 of around $1.38 billion. 

Overall in 2024, we can conclude that the successful rise of eSports leagues is mostly due to its growing market share, 50% of which is split between media rights and advertisements. With all of these factors taken into account, we suspect a massive rise in viewers as well as revenue, eSports has continuously shown that it is very much comparable to watching real sports.