“It’s certainly an opportunity for the space to demonstrate that esports can scratch the itch on competition,” said Lee Trink, CEO of FaZe Clan, which fields a team in the Call of Duty League in addition to its stable of L.A.-based streamers. “The trains are continuing to run over at FaZe Clan.”
Across what has become a highly-diversified esports landscape, certain leagues and games are better positioned to weather the uncertainty now facing the world. But the pervasive belief across the esports community is that more people will discover and watch matches, even if revenue generation from live events is temporarily unavailable.
“Canceled events impact a certain aspect of the fan experience, but unlike traditional sports where the live event is a financial and economic driver of the overall experience, esports is different in that, from a broadcast perspective, so much of broadcast is focused on online and not as dependent on the live audience,” said Kent Wakeford, Co-founder of Gen.G, an esports organization, and a member of the board of directors for FLASHPOINT, a new league for the game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. “For the League of Legends World Championship at the Bird’s Nest in China there were 40,000 people, but 100 million people were watching it online. And it is [those] 100 million people that are fueling the growth of the esports ecosystem to a much greater degree than the actual events.”
That online audience has continued to grow over the past weeks as much of the world has stayed home to cope with the coronavirus outbreak. Citing internal figures, Wakeford said Gen.G has seen an 18.2 percent bump in Chinese viewership over the last two months — which has featured lockdowns in Wuhan and across the mainland — on live-streaming sites Douyu and Huya for its Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) and League of Legends (LoL) teams. The first day of the ESL Pro League, which features the game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, reported an audience increase to 146,000 viewers March 16’s matches, compared to 115,000 a year ago, a 27-percent increase.
“I believe you’ll run out of things to watch on Netflix … so people will surf the web trying to find stuff to entertain themselves,” Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities monitoring the video gaming market, said of esports’ prospects. “There is an opportunity to expand their audience. It won’t expand by 50 percent, but it could possibly expand to 20 percent.”
Gaming as a whole is also seeing a boost, as evidenced when gaming platform Steam hit an all-time high number of concurrent users on March 15, with 20 million online and 6.2 million in-game.
Twitch declined to provide any figures around a change in viewership, but Sensor Tower, a research firm, shared data which showed sharp increases in first-time Twitch app downloads in Europe. Greece, Italy and Spain saw increases of 50 percent, 41 percent and 26 percent week-over-week, respectively, over the past seven days, according to Randy Nelson, Sensor Towers’s Head of Mobile Insights.
In the U.S., which is only now beginning to see lockdowns, first-time installs increased by 14 percent week-over-week, but Nelson pointed out that the figure was still about 8 percent under the average weekly installs for 2020.
Increased interest in gaming is also evident on other fronts as people seek alternatives to live sports and its accompanying aspects. Draft Kings reported a 12 percent increase in active players of its League of Legends fantasy league, and will feature its biggest contest ever this week, with a $60,000 prize pool.
A world of entertainment online
The current state of the sports world now gives people who have heard of esports, but may have not had time to check it out, a chance to do so. It also promotes opportunities for content creators, already celebrities to younger audiences, with a surge in school-age viewers with more time on their hands with the closing of educational institutions. In Italy, for example, there has been a 66-percent viewership spike in minutes watched from the first week of February to the past week when the national quarantine began, according to StreamElements, a company that provides tools for streamers’ online broadcasts.
“I think all streamers should try to stream during the daytime to help keep school-age kids busy and engaged,” Turner “Tfue” Tenney, the world’s most-watched streamer, wrote in a text message to The Washington Post. “Personally, I will be streaming earlier and I will be encouraging kids to stream so parents can go on the Twitch app and see them. Also, kids should educate themselves on Khan Academy while school’s out, and read a book. …
“Sadly with all major sports halted there’s a huge void, you know. Dude, I think all we can do as gamers is say, ‘Hey guys, watch us game on Twitch and enjoy our entertainment.’ Maybe we can game with out-of-work pro athletes, and get everyone on the platform and get through this,” he said.
Some of the athletes who have expressed interest in joining the gaming community include the NBA’s Trae Young, Luka Doncic and Ja Morant — which was correctly predicted by Will Hershey, CEO of Roundhill Investments.
“Traditional sports athletes who are out of a job, a lot are active gamers and streamers and I could see them gravitate toward Twitch to engage with their fan base,” Hershey told The Post.
Some have already jumped in. Monday, FaZe Clan announced a Pro-Am Charity that is scheduled to feature Ben Simmons, Juju Smith-Schuster, Andre Drummond and Chad Ochocinco.
FaZe’s head of esports, Erik Anderson, said the increased attention during this time could lead to improved output.
“Maybe with people diving in, more ideas coming in, we can come up with fun stuff to fill the time,” he said. “If people are watching more, they’re going to demand a higher type of content.”
In addition to esports organizations and streamers having a chance to grow their bases, some see a lane for particular games to grab more of an audience, especially those games which are realistic and easy to follow.
“It’s about offering average Americans, causal players, games they can understand,” Hershey said. “Call of Duty has a position to come out of this really the strongest, as opposed to League of Legends. … I don’t see LoL clips on ESPN doing as well as Call of Duty.”
Hershey also noted that sports games, which have not traditionally garnered massive viewership for their esports competitions, have an opportunity to benefit as well.
“The biggest difficulty with sports simulation games ever becoming top-tier esports was that there was always the option of watching real thing,” Hershey said. “You take that out of the picture, and you absolutely could see NBA fans getting into NBA 2K.”
In fact, the Phoenix Suns gave it a shot when they announced they would finish their season virtually on NBA 2K20. The stream, the team’s first, at one point topped 12,000 concurrent viewers.
‘Esports seem to be on a safer ground’
The major esports leagues have taken various approaches in coping with the coronavirus outbreak, though all have canceled live-audience events. The League of Legends Championship Series suspended operations before announcing the resumption of league play from remote locations. A planned Spring Finals live event in Frisco, Texas was canceled.
ESL postponed its ESL One Dota 2 Major in L.A., though started its CS:GO Pro League with online play. The NBA 2K league postponed the start of its season, originally scheduled to begin March 24. Other postponements include Apex Legends Global Series and the Rocket League Season 9 World Championship. Events associated with the newly minted Smash World Tour were also either postponed or allowed players to opt out without penalty to their league standing.
Pushing ahead, the Overwatch League said its matches would resume on March 21, but that all homestands — a major initiative for that league featuring regionally hosted weekend events and competitions — would be canceled through April. The league also canceled its Midseason Tournament with a pot of $1.05 million. Call of Duty League is also planning to go online-only.
FLASHPOINT moved its regular season games from a crowd-less Culver City, California, studio to a remote setup and will not hold its playoffs in Stockholm, as originally planned.
In addition to safety concerns, leagues also have to deal with technological issues, especially in games where a fraction of a second can mean the difference between winning and losing. The underlying issue is how long it takes data to get from a player’s machine to the game’s server, called ping. High ping leads to lag, which leads to an unfair playing field. Games like Fortnite organize players by region, thus increasing the chance everyone will have similar ping.
“The bigger the game, the more global logistics, the more they’re probably hurting from this,” said Erik Anderson, head of sports for FaZe Clan. “Games that are more regionally focused are going to be fine.”
The Overwatch League will have to deal with its teams competing across continents in North America and Asia.
“We’re currently working on a revamped match schedule that will allow all teams around the world to begin competing in March while minimizing latency concerns,” an Overwatch League release stated last week. ESL’s Pro League faces a similar issue, deciding to group teams by location, thereby lessening the distance from the server.
Though the leagues figure to lose money and exposure opportunities at the local level with these changes, industry analysts don’t expect the cuts to be too deep for the companies that own and operate these leagues.
“Companies make money from games, not esports,” Pachter said. “There isn’t going to be an impact long term unless this is the Black Plague and if a recession is so deep it causes massive unemployment so people can’t afford to buy games. League of Legends World Championship isn’t about making money, it’s about promoting League of Legends.”
Sponsors, which provide esports organizations with the lion’s share of their revenue, are also unconcerned. In fact, now that esports has the stage of competitive entertainment largely to itself, it is already attracting new business opportunities. Zenni, a direct to consumer eyewear company, which has a patch on the Chicago Bulls’ jersey and sponsors the San Francisco 49ers, is doubling down on its esports partnerships.
“Currently esports seem to be on a safer ground just by their digitally-native existence and we’re obviously excited by that,” said Sean Pate, Zenni’s brand communications officer.
Pate said Zenni is planning to announce more esports team sponsorships, which he called the “most sustainable” during this uncertain period.
“If there was ever a time in sports history that digitally-native forms of entertainment would be top of mind, it’s now,” he said.
Noah Smith is a regular contributor to The Washington Post and staff journalist for Direct Relief, a nonprofit. Follow his work on Twitter @Vildehaya.
