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Esports will form part of a $45.4 billion market by 2020

South Africans have had esports on the mind for the last two weeks thanks to Rush and VS Gaming.

The action continues this weekend with the Valkyrie Challenge but many folks are likely still scratching their heads at the fact that people love watching other people play video games.

Superdata, a firm that takes a closer look at the games industry and identifies trends has released its Games and Interactive Media report 2017 and esports is set to grow.

Last year interactive media (which is a catch-all term for virtual, augmented and mixed reality software, gaming videos and esports) contributed $6.3 billion to the $93.8 billion in revenue games brought in worldwide. Superdata puts forward that by 2020 games will draw in as much as $168.8 billion in revenue with interactive media accounting for $45.4 billion of that figure.

However, because esports is grouped with other unrelated things we need to dive a bit deeper.

The firm’s report goes on to say that by 2020 VR will draw in $28.3 billion with VR software revenue accounting for $16.2 billion. Meanwhile gaming video content will draw in $3.3 billion in the same year.

Similar research by NewZoo released earlier this year suggests that esports alone will draw in global revenue of $2.7 billion. It’s important to note that NewZoo takes advertising and sponsorship revenue into a account while Superdata does not.

To put that into perspective at the end of 2016 esports is projected to account for $1.2 billion.

Of course these are just projections but you really don’t need to look very hard or far to see that money is just about being thrown at esports.

VS Gaming recently gave away R1.5 million to FIFA players, the same organisation gave White Rabbit Gaming R550 000 in prize money for winning the Dota 2 Masters and this weekend Amaryllis Gaming and Energy Esports with battle it out for R50 000.

The crux of the matter is that esports is not about to die off anytime soon and you may as well get used to us enjoying it as much as we’re used to folks enjoying regular sport.

[Image – CC BY 2.0 Karl Hols]

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