2020 had certainly been a very exciting year for esports as a whole – the cancellations and postponements for traditional sporting events throughout the year provided a unique opportunity for esports as a whole to grow and expand into much wider markets than before, but the opportunities may not only exist throughout the end of last year as there is certainly a trending appreciation for esports heading into 2021 too.
Much of this has come thanks to changing attitudes in gaming as a wider audience than before has become interested, particularly through platforms like mobile with a growing number of genres catching a wider audience across all demographics, a list here of some of the biggest services in genres like casinos that aren’t registered to initiatives such as gamstop are certainly at the top, but there but there are certainly many other options available too – the natural progression from the mobile gaming space seems to be within the growing list of titles in esports too.
(Image from forbes.com)
The most recent expansions have come as more traditional gaming options in sports like football and basketball have made the transition through FIFA and NBA as both are now represented online and provide more familiarity, much like the launch of mobile gaming, these titles have helped bring a wider audience across and encourage other markets of esports to expand where they may not have done before. In a similar note, the biggest three games in the space have been able to post huge numbers surpassing even the biggest traditional sporting events. The biggest of the year in League of Legends which was able to host an offline event toward the end of 2020 was able to top out at 49.95 million viewers from estimated figures, growing an estimated five million concurrent viewers on the previous year.
Although most major sporting has somewhat returned to normal, there are still other hurdles to overcome with the likes of the lack of spectators in attendance which isn’t likely to change until the later half of the year, providing opportunities for the livestreams of the big online and offline events in esports to continue operating at a similar or much higher capacity as expectations continue to grow – the biggest titles are certainly only getting bigger, and the smaller titles are starting to catch up – if you’ve not yet checked out esports for yourself, these first few months when everything gets back on track and the bigger offline events start to take place again, and can certainly be a very exciting introduction for your first look into esports.
