And why the distinction matters to brands looking to invest in the space
To many, gaming and esports are one and the same. Gaming influencers are too often conflated with esports athletes, and many can’t really tell the difference between a gameplay live stream from one of an esports match. While these two verticals do stem from the same medium of video games and often overlap and feed off each other, there are some significant differences between esports and gaming that brands and marketers should understand in order to properly invest and play an active role in the space.
Esports is a Sport
Esports are multiplayer video games played competitively for spectators by professional gamers. The primary intention of an esports athlete is to excel at playing a certain game. They spend their days practicing, learning new strategies, and perfecting team coordination in order to be the very best at a specific video game title. Esports athletes are systematically trained like professional athletes that compete in any other major sports leagues such as the NFL. Teams offer their players training facilities, coaches, nutritionists, and personal chefs to ensure their players are in top shape for the competition.
You might be asking yourself, why? Why put so much time, effort, and money into being the best at the video game. Well, the answer is the same as to why so many people dedicate their lives to becoming a professional athlete — status and money. The 2018 Dota 2 International, one of the top esports competitions, had a total prize pool of $25M and the winning team, Team Liquid, took home the first-place prize of $10.8M.
With a $25M prize pool on the line, esports tournaments are high-stake events that fans will show up and watch in person, just like any other sport. Still, the majority of viewership happens on live streaming platforms like Twitch. This is a shift from the major broadcast channels that have hosted traditional sports for the past several decades. Esports have, in a way, turned video games into something that is professionally organized and monetized as a media event. To reach this new audience gravitating towards esports, brands will need to shift where they are spending ad dollars.
Many owners of traditional sports teams have recognized the value in esports and started investing in the space. The owners of the Boston Patriots, New York Mets and Philadelphia Flyers have all invested in Blizzard’s Overwatch League as team owners. In addition, traditional sports leagues are recruiting talents from the gaming and esports space in order to grow their own esports initiatives. Most notably, the NBA recently hired Twitch’s CMO Kate Jhaveri as their new CMO. Jhaveri will be in charge of all the global marketing efforts at the NBA and will also be responsible for growing the NBA own esports league, the NBA 2K league.
Gaming is about Entertainment
While gaming does include titles that are played competitively by esports teams, all of gaming happens outside of officially sanctioned competitions. It serves the primary intention of pure enjoyment and entertainment. Most streamers on Twitch, for example, fall under the category of gaming. They spend the average workday behind a computer playing video games and entertaining their fan base. They are entertainers creating content for an audience who enjoys watching, and they are good at it, racking up tens of thousands of concurrent viewers at a time. But that doesn’t make them esports athletes.
It is no secret that the majority of Twitch’s top streamer like Ninja, Dr. Lupo, and others didn’t qualify for one of the 300 spots in the Fornite World Cup, which is Fornite’s first-ever esports tournament. This goes to show how large of a skill level gap there is between even the most popular streamers and professional players. The gaming influencers are not necessarily known for their ability at excelling at a certain game, like an esports star would, but more for their winning personality and ability to connect with their fans.
Gaming is also inclusive of individuals playing games with friends or solo, just for fun, whether they are played on a console, PC or mobile device. Single-player games like Fallout, Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda tend to be adventure-focused with long game runtime (sometimes 100+ hours of gameplay), including puzzles and riddles. Additionally, these sorts of games usually contain a lot of attention to detail when it comes to landscapes and storylines, making them perfect for a gaming enthusiast to play through on Twitch with a niche but dedicated audience.
Lastly, and by far the most popular form of gaming are mobile games, such as Candy Crush and Clash Royal. These types of games appeal to a wide audience of all ages and are the types of games that are consumer pass the time with. Candy Crush is one of, if not the most popular mobile game with 9 million players averaging between three to six hours a day playing it.
In retrospect, Twitch is most likely the cause of the confusion between esports and gaming. It is the platform where people go to keep up with their favorite streamers, watch people play their favorite games, and it’s also the top destination for esports leagues to broadcast competitions like League of Legends Championship Series. More broadly, Twitch has become the single word that people cling to when to describe all gaming-related content. With the rising popularity of Twitch and the variety of content it hosts, the line between esports and gaming starting to blur, because they all take place on the same platform.
Why the Distinction Matters
For brands, it is important to understand these differences between gaming and esports in order to effectively enter an environment medium that is rapidly capturing the attention of the Millennial and Gen Z audience. Esports, like traditional sports, is professionally organized, and therefore comes with a lot of brand opportunities baked in for sponsorships. Gaming, on the other hand, is an entertainment category that contains multitudes. It also offers plenty of brand opportunities, but they need to be carefully assessed and vetted before brands can find a natural way in.
Therefore, brands should keep in mind the differences between esports and gaming when devising their campaign strategy. Depending on the campaign objectives, sponsoring a major tent-pole esports event that hits 1 million concurrent viewers might be more beneficial than working with a streamer to hit a smaller audience at a higher frequency, and it could be the reverse for another brand looking for more sustained engagements. Too often, marketers have erroneously lumped esports and gaming together into the same category in their media planning with little consideration of their differences. In order to effectively guide our clients to invest in this space, however, a distinction must be made.
If you’d like to learn more about the esports and gaming space, the growing impact that gaming has on our culture, as well as how to effectively work with streamers and esports leagues to reach the elusive millennial male audience, please reach out to Ben Hone (ben@ipglab.com) to start a conversation.
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