Esports Statistics 2022: Market Growth, Revenues & More

 

Esports changed the world forever. The global Esports industry has reached unprecedented numbers during the last years, which leads us to think that Esports are not going anywhere.

Million Esports enthusiasts gather together to watch professional players play their favorite games.

“Why would you watch someone else playing instead of playing yourself?” - this is a common question that non-gamers ask Esports fans frequently.

“Isn’t it the same thing as watching your favorite soccer team playing against their rivals?” - well, it’s very similar.

Traditional sports have driven our lives for centuries, and now, we are taking that same feeling to the digital realm with Esports games.

That’s why today, GrowFollowing is committed to providing you with interesting statistics about the overall growth of Esports.

Continue reading so you can learn more about:

• Esports Statistics in 2022;
• What can we expect for Esports in 2022 and beyond?
• Esports revenue, events, players, and games analysis.

Esports Stats Highlights

Before we get to talking about prize money, market revenue, and other important pieces of information, let’s start with a quick appetizer regarding the Esports industry.

• Esports are expected to reach $1.6 billion market value by 2024;
• Esports popularity is rising across all continents, including Latin America and some countries in the Middle East;
• New games continue to attract new people - Halo Infinite Raleigh event took place a few days after the launch of the game and managed to become the biggest Halo event ever;
• Sponsorships are becoming more common while the Esports audience continues to grow;
• Esports expect to have 300 million occasional viewers by 2024;
• The first Esports event is now 50 years old - time flies!

Although Esports are not something new in our world, the truth is that the industry’s rapid growth has created an unprecedented amount of Esports events.

Esports Popularity

Watching Esports videos, matches, and games, is now a standardized activity in the gaming community.

Esports, which simply stands for Electronic Sports, are driven by Esports events where players and fans meet together.

Clearly, the Esports organizations aim at a competitive gaming audience, but Esports growth includes everyone.

The Play-to-Earn model is taken one step further with Esports investment because Esports players are not playing just to have fun - they want to win prize pools, and fans want to watch them win as well.

Esports Statistics Viewership Stats

So how many people watch Esports? Based on Statista’s live streaming market report, we can divide the Esports audience into two types:

• Regular Esports enthusiasts: the Esports industry went from 196 million regular watches in 2019 to 234 million watches in 2021;
• Occasional Esports watchers: the number of people who watch Esports occasionally went from 200 million in 2019 to 240 million in 2021.

What’s more, it is safe to say that million Esports enthusiasts started in this universe as a direct consequence of 2020’s pandemic, according to Statista.

This increased interest has powered the global Esports market revenue by providing a tremendous growth of audiences, thus becoming one really exciting industry to watch in the years to come.

Esports Viewers Demographics

So, who watches Esports? With millions of enthusiasts around the globe, we can definitely state that the Esports market follows a specific pattern in the audience.

The Esports market audience is primarily driven towards men, while women across the United States are not as interested as their male counterparts.

41% of men watch Esports one way or another, while only 15% of women do so.

What’s more, main Esports fans are between 18 and 24 year-old, but the average age of Esports viewership highly depends on popular games and types of events.

This goes both for regular and occasional viewers.

One thing’s for sure -although the European audience of regular and occasional viewers has increased, South Korea is the largest regional Esports market (32%), and the Chinese Esports market (30%) continues to drive the most enthusiast Esports viewers globally.

Esports Market Size

As of today, the total Esports market size is $1.28 billion, including all kinds of revenues made by Esports organizations.

This rate is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 23% during the years to come.

Esports Streaming Platforms

Having a tournament prize pool surely motivates watchers to engage into this universe, but social platforms are what make possible the massive standardization of the Esports industry.

Although Facebook, Twitch, and YouTube gaming compete to be the leading Esports platform, the truth is that Twitch is the absolute king when it comes to streaming Esports globally.

The Asia Pacific Region (APAC) concentrates over half the global viewership of online platforms combining Twitch and YouTube.

Still, American and European streamers are the ones leading the biggest Esports industry communities online.

Esports Streaming Hours and Most Popular Games

So, which games are the most streamed in terms of hours? Watching Esports teams playing is one thing, and watching hours of streamed games is another.

Surprisingly, the games that are streamed the most are not the ones with the highest prize pool.

The list has consistently remained itself steady over the years, being the top three the following games:

1. League of Legends, with more than 350 million hours as of 2022’s Q1;
2. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which has over 215 million hours;
3. and Dota 2, with almost 200 million streamed hours across different online social platforms (mainly Twitch).

Esports Industry Growth

The global Esports market have experienced the following numbers when it comes to steady growth during the last years:

• The overall viewers’ number increased 11.7% in 2021 if compared to 2020’s numbers;
• When it comes to revenue growth, we have a 14.5% growth when compared to previous years;
• We are seeing double and triple digits growth in the Middle East, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Central Southern Asia. The Spanish-speaking Esports market experienced a growth of 396%.

Esports Startups Founded

Esports marketing has become a stand-alone marketing branch.

Thus, it’s not a surprise that millions of startups have arisen during the last few years as well.

It is safe to mention that disruptive startups will become more common while the growth continues to take place.

Among the newest and most successful startups in the Esports branch, we have:

1. Mobalytics.gg: with an amazing search growth of 4600% during the last 5 years, Mobalytics help plates to understand their strengths and weaknesses in a game in order to improve;
2. PlayVS.com: do you want to become a real professional Esports player? PlayVS offers coaching services to help you achieve your dreams;
3. NerdStreet.com: why would you play at home when NerdStreet has dozens of Esports facilities all over the United States? Experience something different with your Esports teams!

Esports Game Stats

There wouldn’t be sports tournaments, watchers, and players without good games.

As we mentioned before, new games are launched every year, but there’s a clear pattern when it comes to most popular Esports games.

Top Bigger Total Prize Money Esport Games

Defining the most popular games on Esports is not as easy as someone might believe.

For instance, the most-watched Esports on Twitch is League of Legends, but when it comes to prize money, it isn’t even in the top 3.

The same happens with DOTA 2: although its player-base it’s not as big as someone would imagine, the prize money in any DOTA 2 annual tournament is usually pretty big.

That’s why popularity doesn’t translate into prize pool revenue.

1. Counter-Strike Global Offensive: Counter-Strike continues to be at the top, with average cumulative prize pools of $8 million;
2. PUBG: surprisingly enough, Player’s Unknown Battlegrounds almost managed to get a prize pool as big as CS with $7.8 million;
3. Fortnite: Fortnite isn’t just one of the most popular games out there, but also managed to get cumulative prize pools of $6.12 million;
4. PUBG mobile: PUBG is changing the way in how we see mobile Esports, with a cumulative pool of almost $6 million;
5. DOTA 2: as we mentioned before, this game isn’t that popular and still managed to get an overall prize pool of $5.4 million.

How Many Active Pro Players Are There?

Esports tournaments are mainly carried out locally in different countries. International tournaments are as big as they get, but when it comes to overall players numbers, the list is the following:

1. United States has almost 20,000 competitive professional players;
2. China is in second place with nearly 5,000 players;
3. The third place goes to the Republic of Korea, with an estimate of 4,169 players across the country.

Pro Players Revenue

The highest earning players industry list is mainly conformed by male players.

There aren’t many female Esports fans, and that is directly shown in the number of female Esports players as well.

The leading female Esports player is Sasha Hostyn, who has earned $420,000 in prizes from tournaments.

Only three female Esports players have won over $100,000 in prizes.

The number is highly different when it comes to male players.

Johan Sundstain, popularly known as N0tail, has made over $7 million in revenue.

What’s more, over 100 male players have earned more than $100,000 in prizes from tournaments.

Esports Tournaments Stats

League of Legends, CS, Halo, and Call of Duty tournaments happen all the time, but the prize pool highly varies depending on the location of the event.

However, when it comes to popularity and not tournament prize, the numbers and games are slightly different.

Top Tournaments by Viewers

If we take a close look at major Esports tournaments, we can analyze their viewership and popularity within minutes.

1. Free Fire World Series 2021: this tournament hosted in Singapore back in 2021 managed to achieve 5.41 million viewers at its peak;
2. League of Legends 2019 World Championship: back in 2019, LoL confirmed that there was something big going on with Esports with almost 4 million viewers;
3. PUGB Mobile Global Championship: mobile players also love watching Esports - 3.8 million viewers back in 2020 confirm it.

Number of Esports Tournaments Started

Esports Charts shows us the current number of tournaments going on at this moment, while also providing data of previous tournaments.

There have been more than 19,900 tournaments started since the website began gathering information and statistics regarding the events.

Likewise, small and micro tournaments won’t probably add to the statistics, since they don’t have the necessary pools and viewership to count them as big events.

Esports Industry Revenues

The industry of Esports revenue is leaving the whole world amazed by the ground-breaking numbers obtained year after year.

It is clear that this revenue reflects itself in the steady growth of an industry taking the online world by storm, so let’s get to it.

How Much Money Does the Esports Industry Make?

Firstly, before taking a look at the total Esports revenue, we need to comprehend how money is made in the industry.

1. Esports sponsorships represent the largest contributing segment in the industry, making more than 60% revenue on Esports (641 million);
2. Media rights and exposure follow behind with over $192 million in revenue;
3. Publisher fees provide a market revenue of more than $126 million;
4. At last, other segments, such as tickets sales, digital content, streaming, and merchandise, add up to around $120 million. That makes the estimated total market revenue at over $1 billion.

Esports Funding

From Metaverse Esports Leagues to acquiring Statistics websites, Esports investments are growing at an unexpected pace in 2021 and 2022.

A multitude of Esports entities are securing investments in order to continue growing in an industry that’s becoming way too competitive for small enterprises.

Learn more about funding in the Esports industry in EsportsInsider.com.

Esports Industry Worth

The Esports Industry is valued at over $1 billion as of 2022’s Q1.

The year is just starting, and so is the decade.

This leads us to believe that this number will grow unexpectedly in the future.

In fact, the projections say that this worth will increase to $1.62 billion in just 2 years, a number that not many industries are capable of obtaining.

Esports in 2022 and Beyond

Esports are not new, but they are undoubtedly changing the way we see video games in our daily lives.

2022 is set to become the year where Esports reach audiences that never even heard about them before.

The continuous explosion of new teams and games in Europe, America, and Asia, will ultimately lead to the definitive standardization of the Esports industry.

For more amazing statistics and in-detail analysis of the gaming and social industry, you can always count on GrowFollowing.

Esports Stats FAQ

Who is the Most Famous Esport Player?

Faker is the most famous and well-known LoL Esports player all over the world.

Although he isn’t the one who has earned the most money, he surely is one of the main faces of the Esports competitive industry.

Which is the Most Successful Esports Team?

Team Liquid has earned over $22 million playing in different competitions.

Thus, they are considered to be the most successful team in Esports history.

Other teams, like Faze Clan and Cloud9, follow Team Liquid closely.

About the author

Karen

Karen is a senior technical writer and copywriter here at GrowFollowing. Her area of expertize are social media apps and new media.

Oliver

Oliver is GrowFollowing founder and covers topics ranging from fintech to Internet.