China’s e-sports Industry is Booming

With the continuous development of the e-sports market, the competition of international e-sports events is also becoming fierce.  In 2018, there were more than 500 popular e-sports events in China, shaping China the most influential and promising e-sports market in the world.  With the expansion of the e-sports industry, the number of e-sports users and the size of e-sports audiences, it is expected that e-sports events will show explosive growth.  With the global development of e-sports events, it is of great significance to improve the experience and influence of the events, meet the needs of fans, improve the economic benefits of enterprises, and promote better and faster development of the industry.

With the rapid economic growth, national policy has gradually shifted to support and encourage e-sports.  In 2008, the general administration of sport of China upgraded e-sports from the 99th official sport to be the 78th.  In 2017, the former Ministry of Culture issued the development plan for the cultural industry during the 13th Five-year Plan period, proposed to support the development of new formats such as sports competition performances and e-sports.  In 2018, e-sports officially became the electronic sport event of the Asian games in Jakarta, achieving the same status as traditional sports in the national sports strategy.

The rapid development of e-sports brings about the huge demand of enterprises for e-sports talents, the lack of talent training system, the shortage of talent accumulation in the industry.  The scarcity of talents has become the bottleneck of development facing the new industry of e-sports.  In order to speed up the development of e-competitive professional skills, in September 2016, the Ministry of Education put e-sports and management as an addendum profession in the national “higher vocational education (specialty) professional directory”, which was officially implemented in 2017.  As soon as the Ministry of Education document was issued, colleges and universities had paid attention to and actively declared their participation.  In recent years, electric competition professional was added. The establishment of e-sports and management majors provided strong support for the training of e-sports professionals in China.

At present, there are more than 5,000 e-sports teams (including clubs) in operation in China, and about 100,000 professional e-sports players. There are also a large number of semi-professional and amateur e-sports players active in various small and medium-sized e-sports events.  At the same time, a large number of e-sports players are engaged in e-sports coaching, e-sports data analysis, e-sports events and other related work in e-sports clubs and e-sports partner training platforms.  At present, the number of e-sports employees exceeds 500,000, spread in many cities including the first, second and third tier cities.  Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, xi ‘an, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing and other places are the high-density areas for practitioners.  In addition, the construction of e-sports towns in Shandong, Zhejiang, Anhui, Hunan, Liaoning and other places has also promoted the development of e-sports employment in the surrounding provinces and cities.

According to survey data, 54% of e-sports players are aged between 16 and 22, 26% are aged between 23 and 30, only 16% are aged between 31 and 40, and only 4% are aged over 40.  Per survey results, age of e-sports players is generally low, with 80% of the respondents under 30 years old.  Per survey on the enterprise scale of e-sports employees, those with <50 employees account for 52%, 51-100 employees account for 30%, 101-500 employees account for 12%, and 501 employees and above account for 6%.  The enterprises of e-sports players are mainly small and micro companies because employers are mainly e-sports clubs for now.

The development of e-sports market requires a large number of active-sports players.  By improving the overall technical level of e-sports, the fun and appreciation of e-sports, the industry can be promoted, fan economy can be driven, and the overall industry scale can be improved.  According to incomplete statistics, <15% of e-sports positions are filled.  It is predicted that in the next five years, e-sports will need nearly 2 million people.  Market demand and the number of employees will show spurt growth, with core positions covering all country’s first, second and third-tier cities’ e-sports industry chain.

In 2017, the Hero League Professional League LPL Division live matches had >10 billion audiences. The S7 Bird Nest final, though with no Chinese team, was still 90 percent full.  The CSL Beijing Guoan final at the nearby Workers’ Stadium was only 50-60 percent full compared to the sold-out Bird Nest stadium.

In 2018, more than 7.09 billion people watched live professional events in LPL in the first half of the year.  The S8 finals attracted more than 205 million viewers worldwide, more than 1/30 of the world’s population.  On November 3, 2018, Chinese team IG received congratulations from the whole people after winning the S8 championship, and the influence of the event spread beyond the e-sports circle. The Communist Youth League Central Committee, CCTV news, Ziguangge, Xinhua View, The Global Times, Phoenix and other mainstream media have also sent articles of congratulations.

Globally, the total number of e-sports viewers grew to 454 million in 2019, up 15% year on year.  The number of core e-sports fans will reach 201 million, up 16.3% year-on-year, with 75 million expected to be Chinese.

The overall industrial scale of e-sports is growing at a much faster rate than the growth and speed of video games. With the gradual improvement of the e-sports industry chain, the e-sports industry will form a revenue model similar to that of traditional sports in the future.  The “industry ecological income” of e-sports will be derived from e-sports “events”, and the overall scale of e-sports industry is unlimited.

In 2018, the overall market size of e-sports in China was CNY 94.05 billion, and is expected to exceed CNY 135 billion in 2020.  China’s e-sports market has become the most influential and potential market in the world.

Source:  Gyro e-sports