Esports: The Opportunity and Saviour?

In an ideal scenario, a football fan would be relishing the cut-throat competition in various domestic leagues and the Champions League as the season would have drawn to an exciting end.

A tennis fan would have witnessed yet another season dominated by the Big Three.

A cricket lover, especially the ones in India would have enjoyed a hot yet enticing summer with IPL-13. But COVID-19 robbed all the sports fanatics of this and left them with nothing but feeling frustrated amidst spurts of nostalgia by watching highlight reels of old matches.

Postponing the Olympics, the world’s biggest sporting event, to 2021 has proved that the impact of the pandemic has been severe in the sporting world. The entire sporting calendar for 2020 has been jolted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, if anything that has benefited in such surreal times, it is esports.

Sports fans and players across the world who were left frustrated by cancelled matches in various sports are turning to esports, with professional real-world athletes joining virtual game tournaments of football, auto racing and many more.

NASCAR has already made its esports debut with the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series Race.

The Football Association (FA) launched a week-long #FootballisStayingatHome Cup in which Manchester United striker Marcus Rashford and Borussia Dortmund starlet Jadon Sancho got behind joysticks to participate in an open competition.

EA Sports, owners of the popular game FIFA, are set to initiate the ‘Stay and Play Cup’ to help raise funds for the fight against COVID-19.

One the most popular and viewed esports tournament, League of Legends' 2020 Championship Series, was called off in Berlin and shifted to be played on an online platform. Even though the organisers took a hit on the revenue from attendance, to their surprise, online viewership did not dip. They received a major boost when ESPN decided to broadcast the tournament. This has been viewed as a paradigm shift for the esports industry.

More players have meant more viewers and audience engagement. Online streaming platforms recorded a 43% jump in viewership to nearly 495 million hours in the week starting March 29, compared to the week at the beginning of 2020, according to analytics firm Stream Hatchet.

Amazon.com Inc's Twitch, which dominates the market for game streaming, recorded a nearly 60% jump in viewership in March with over 1,300 million hours watched, compared to a year earlier, according to Superdata, a Nielsen company. The esports industry must view this dramatic rise in viewership as an enormous opportunity as it is the only 'sport' left standing amidst the carnage wrecked by the COVID-19 pandemic.

What primarily works for esports is that, its origin is indoors and it is contactless, which is the need of the hour.

It is a type of sport which originated from basements or living rooms in houses. That, coupled with our desire to connect and compete with one another online, ultimately drove gamers to create and support the notion of esports.

The nature of this type of gaming allows for more flexibility to meet demand while operating remotely, and many events, leagues and competitions are pivoted towards online participation and viewership.

With the entire world on lockdown, people have found time to pay attention to esports and its advantages.

Interestingly, WHO, which defines ‘video-gaming’ as a disorder, is now supporting the #PlayApartTogether initiative to promote social distancing with the help of top gaming and esports companies.

In such times, it turns out to be a win-win situation for both, the players and the esports industry. To put this into perspective, Counter-Strike alone has surged to one million concurrent players.

The opportunity now must be to take this unique situation to rally new fans, new users as well as curious onlookers. Can esports be the industry that figures out a way to surge in the middle of a pandemic?

Only time will tell, but in all probability that looks difficult because nothing can replace the feeling of togetherness and brotherhood one experiences outdoors.

Mr. Sanjeev Anand is the Country Head - Commercial, Rural Banking, IndusInd Bank.