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Five Ways eSports Could Gain the Same Recognition as Traditional Sports

Kay TurnerMar 18, 2019

In days gone by, you had sports and you had video gaming. Other than a few outliers – chess, for example – the distinction between the two was pretty clear. Over the years though, things have become less clear-cut! eSports has seen a rapid rise in popularity over recent time to now be a multi-million-dollar industry.

The figures don’t lie, and in the case of eSports, they make for interesting reading. In 2018, the annual revenue generated was $865m, while the expected total for this year is just over $1bn. By 2022, this annual revenue figure is expected to around $1.7bn. This kind of upward trend is why eSports is big business now, and it shows no signs of letting up.

While this is great news for eSports and its many millions of global fans, many think that it could have some way to go to getting the recognition that traditional sports enjoy. Just what can it do to bridge this gap?

The ‘CSGO problem’ – how can eSports get on par with traditional sports?

Soccer, basketball, NFL and baseball – all popular traditional sports that most people can relate to and recognize. But CSGO, LoL, OW, Dota? Even amongst gamers, eSports titles can be unfamiliar and slightly alien. The issue for the eSports industry right now is that, while growing steadily, it does not have that same recognition to the person in the street. Here are a few ways that it could fix that in the future:

Attract greater mainstream media coverage – one thing that all major traditional sports have in common is daily reporting on them via mainstream media channels. From newspapers to websites and TV shows, top traditional sports get lots of coverage to help gain traction. To help it become as widely recognized, eSports needs to do this also. When you see it talked about on Fox or CNN regularly, you know it has made it!

Greater presence in sports gambling – one of the major cornerstones of traditional sports is the ability to gamble on them. As the U.S is increasingly coming onboard with, choosing the star player of the World Series to picking who will win the English Premier League has a huge cultural effect, and keeps people invested in the game. The opportunity to gamble on traditional sports helps it to gain maximum exposure to people who might not have seen it before. To help gain more recognition, eSports would be well advised to get more involved with the online sports gambling sector. In fairness, this is something that is possible already with special online bookies making it possible to indulge in CSGO betting.

Explain what eSports is more – eSports is one of those things that can seem obscure or hard to understand if you are not already a fan. To help get more recognition from the general public, as traditional sports do, it needs to continue to explain what it is and show people what it is all about. Once people can get their head around what is involved, cultural acceptance can quickly follow. In some countries, like South Korea, eSports is already a hugely mainstream media, and top players are celebrities on par with traditional sports stars in the West.

Keep going – this may sound a simple answer and in most ways, it is. Many traditional sports were invented a long time ago and have been played professionally for many, many years. This time period allows the culture of the sport to spread through society and take hold. It also gives the sport in question time to really reach new people and attract new fans. If eSports can simply keep going while also reaching more people who do not know about it, it will also find itself more generally recognized.

Keep branching out into new territories – if you take a sport such as soccer, the sheer breadth of its appeal is staggering. Played in 200 countries around the planet, this worldwide coverage allows it to be well known wherever you go. To gain a similar level of recognition, eSports needs to keep breaking into new territories in new places. This will see it become a well-known sport on an even bigger international scale.

eSports could rival soccer or NFL one day

It may seem fanciful to say for those who do not currently watch or play eSports, but it could really be as widely known as major traditional sports one day. With the growing audience figures, increasing annual revenue and massive real-world events, there is everything in place for it to do so. If it can also use some of the above methods to connect with the average Joe, then reaching the same heights as traditional sports is not out of reach.