When video games become big money

Sports betting has been around for a very long time. Pretty much as soon as two players or two teams took each other on, someone took a wager on who would win. While we all know the big tournaments like the Soccer World Cup and the Rugby World Cup and the Olympics and Wimbledon and the US Masters, there is a fast-growing industry that is beginning to attract a lot of attention amongst sports punters – eSports.

As kids we were all told to put away the video games and get back to our homework because “you will never make money playing games!”.

How wrong were our parents?

The modern video game market pulls in bigger numbers than Hollywood box office releases. For comparison:

Global music revenues reached US$19.1 billion in 2018.

Global box office revenues reached US$41.7 billion in 2019.

Global games market generated around US$152.1 BILLION in 2019.

That is massive.

The Avengers: Endgame – the biggest cinematic release of 2019 – pulled in over US$858,373,000 on its opening weekend. Those are some impressive numbers. But compared to the gaming industry? Grand Theft Auto V earned over US$1 BILLION in just three days. In 2013!

So, who’s playing now?

With revenue like this, and games becoming more and more advanced and team focused, it’s no surprise that we began seeing people pulling together to create their own gaming tournaments. What began as a few buddies all hooking their systems together in someone’s garage to spend the weekend playing with and against each other is now a multi-billion dollar industry.

From a LAN game in a room we now have eSports (electronic sports) tournaments that see teams playing against each other in, and I can’t emphasise this enough, a video game while being watched by a live audience of zealous fans. And I’m not talking about a few friends hanging around and watching, the 2014 League of Legends World Championship in Seoul had 40,000 spectators. There are dedicated TV channels like Twitch that feature eSports and eSports tournaments with ESPN-level production values, interviews, analysts and more.

As for the money – remember the quote earlier? About doing homework and not playing games? DOTA 2 holds an annual tournament called The International where the top 18 teams from around the world compete for top honours. The prize pool in 2019? US$34,330,069. The winning team walked away with US$15,620,181 – that’s split between FIVE players (not counting their coaches, dieticians, mental health professionals, physical health trainers, etc. because make no mistake these are now professional sportspeople with all that come with that).

The top earning eSports player in 2019 was a Danish player by the name of Johan Sundstein who raked in US$6,915,222 for the year. In fact, the top 88 eSports players all earned over US$1 million in 2019.

And, as with any sport that attracts such large followings, the sports betting world has definitely started seeing an opportunity.

The most popular eSports games are multiplayer games like DOTA 2, PUBG, Fortnite, League of Legends and CS:GO (look them up, it would take an entire new article to explain role-playing games versus massively multiplayer online roleplaying games or the difference between League of Legends and Counterstrike: Global Offensive). Sports games like FIFA are gaining popularity, and investment, in eSports and eSports betting.

While the intricacies of sports games are well known to fans, the ins and outs of the other eSports games probably need  little investigation before you decide you want to put down some cash. And yet, the eSports betting world is projected to be worth US$30 billion by the end of 2020.

Maybe it’s time to dust off the old Atari?