A billion dollars for the franchise slot and the level of education of the doters – what experts from ESL and Formula 1 told about at the webinar

ESA, the European Sponsorship Association, has hosted a webinar on eSports and the investment opportunities in the industry. The event’s speakers were OverActive Media Holding President Chris Overholt, ESL Global Partnership Brands Director Charlie Allen and Formula 1 Global Partnership Project Manager Will Simon. Cybersport.ru also participated in the webinar and highlighted for you the most interesting points in the discussions.

Demographics of doters – solvent and educated

ESL’s Charlie Allen told potential investors what his organization is doing and how esports tournaments have gone from local events in computer clubs to stadium events with tens of thousands of spectators. Allen added some interesting ESL audience statistics to his e-sports introduction.

81% of it are millennials aged 18 to 34 years, and more than 70% are men. In the USA, more than 50% of ESL viewers are people with high incomes (this figure is about 37% among the total online audience in the country), and more than 52% of them are subscribers of the HBO service (in the country this indicator is 13%), which indicates public willingness to pay for digital services. ESL also claims that 38% of the audience prefers those brands represented in e-sports tournaments.

The organization divided the disciplines into three subgroups according to their importance and popularity among fans of e-sports. The only interesting point in this chart is that Overwatch, which is popular in the USA, is not present among Tier-1 disciplines. This game was one of the first to switch to a franchise model in which many organizers see the future of e-sports, however, in terms of audience and economic importance, the shooter was even inferior even to the Hearthstone card game – at least according to ESL.

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Another interesting point is the demography of fans of different games. So, ESL has deduced that all over the world:

• 85% of the Dota 2 audience is male;
• 39% of fans of this MOBA are between the ages of 20 and 23;
• about 56% of doters have a high income and a diploma of education;
• 71% of the Dota 2 audience has a permanent job;
• 76% of Dota 2 players spend more than six hours a week on video games;
• 89% of doters spend medium or large amounts on their hobbies (ESL did not present these amounts in numerical terms).

The CS: GO audience is similar to Dota 2 fans, although inferior to them in terms of employment – only 61% of the players in the shooter game from Valve have a permanent job. Similar information about other games ESL did not provide.

Pan-pandemic eSports Success

Will Simon from F1 said that his company has been conducting e-sports competitions for three years, and every season they attract more and more participants. To participate in the current F1 F1 draw, Esports filed more than 100 thousand applications.

According to Simon, there are three reasons why such a traditional organization as F1, which several years ago did not even have marketing and digital technology departments, decided to turn to e-sports. The first of them is the opportunity to interact with an audience that is not interested in regular auto racing. About 79% of spectators of F1 esports events in 2019 were under 34 years old.

The second is a chance to connect real races with eSports. Simon noted that Cristiano Ronaldo is likely to succumb to any player in the FIFA, however, professional racers and simulation players find themselves on an equal footing on the virtual track. Such experiments have been carried out more than once – we wrote about some in an article devoted to racing e-sports.

Simon believes that in 2023, the boundaries between virtual and real races are gradually erased. Pilots of “Formula 1” Lando Norris and Nicolas Latifi in March participated in the virtual Grand Prix of Bahrain and attracted more than 350 thousand spectators to the event. According to Simon, in the near future, e-sports competitions will change the system of training young personnel in motorsport. An F1 employee made a prediction that over the next ten years in the next race of “Formula 1” will be the driver, whose career will begin in e-sports.

The third reason for the launch of the eSports F1 is the ability to produce content that is interesting to traditional motorsport fans. After the cancellation of real competitions, Formula 1 held several events that took place and showed in the same format as regular races. These streams attracted audiences from around the world and also encouraged many pilots to pay attention to the simulator – for example, Frenchman Charles Lecler missed the first Grand Prix, but in order to participate in the second, he developed a many-hour training program that allowed him to win the Australian stage in the beginning of April. This event was watched by more than 5 million spectators.

Billion dollars per slot in Overwatch League

Chris Overholt from OverActive Media (Toronto Defiant, Splyce, Mad Lions and others) spoke about the difficulties that eSports teams face today. In his opinion, clubs still do not have a stable business model that could guarantee them long-term profitability. Victories in the sports industry do not guarantee organizations virtually no profit, and therefore even the largest clubs today, according to Overholt, do not have guarantees of a successful future.

Overholt said that the future of eSports is with franchise leagues like the Overwatch League, FLASHPOINT in CS: GO, LEC in LoL, and others. They will allow teams to forecast profits in the future and earn stable income.

He also noted that he sees the prospect of creating local brands that can attract an audience through regional affiliation. The organization adhered to this format, launching Toronto Defiant in Canada.

Earlier, Overholt worked in big sports – in particular, he was involved in marketing the Toronto Raptors basketball club. He admitted that at first his team could hardly collect 30-40 thousand spectators on their own broadcasts. Today, e-sports matches without ads and additional promotion attract tens of times more views, which, according to Overholt, will force many global brands to seriously pay attention to this industry in the coming years.

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At the end of the speech, Overholt presented a slide on which he compared the dynamics of changes in slot prices in franchised NBA and Overwatch League leagues. In the 1980s, the place in the basketball championship was worth $ 58 million, although now the average cost of such a slot exceeds $ 1.9 billion. According to Overholt, e-sports is growing at an even faster pace and therefore should be considered as an extremely promising area for investment. Overholt admits that in 5-10 years the cost of one franchise slot can exceed a billion dollars.