Plans to put eSports into the 2022 Asia Games give credibility to the business of competitive video gaming, and may potentially put it on the path to the Olympics, according to Macquarie.
Olympic status could come by 2024, so says Macquarie analyst Jiang Zhang.
The comments comes after the Olympic Council of Asia, one of the five Olympic committee members, decided to include eSports as a medal event at the planned Hangzhou 2022 Asia Games.
Zhang says the proposed inclusion is “clearly a positive” but he also points to examples of recent scandals in eSports, and asserts that integrity and oversight will be critical for eSports long term outlook.
The analyst also notes that IOC president Thomas Bach isn’t confident that eSports is not yet ready for the Olympics.
“That said, we think that the 2022 Games will be an important event for eSports and its success or failure could impact its long-term trajectory of becoming a recognized sport,” Zhang said.
The undeniable rise of eSports plainly bodes well for London-listed Gfinity Plc (LON:GFIN) which is establishing itself as a leading British eSport events promoter.
Gfinity growing revenues and momentum
AIM quoted Gfinity, in late March, reported a 45% rise in revenues and a significant narrowing of losses in its first half, as the growing eSports promoter continued to build momentum.
"During the six months to December 2016, we continued to build on our strategic objective to establish Gfinity as a leading player in the fast-growing eSports sector,” said chief executive Neville Upton.
During the six months, Gfinity generated £900,000 of revenue which allowed it to reduce its operating loss by £200,000 to £1.7mln - loss per share reduced by 75% to 1p. It ended the period with £2.7mln of cash and equivalents.
Several household names have put their name to Gfinity’s events recently.
In April, it was revealed that US tech titan Microsoft has named the group as its official global tournament partner for the Forza Racing Championship on the Xbox, with Gfinity to provide the platform that will host and broadcast the gaming competition, both online and offline.
Gfinity hosted the online qualifiers for the European and Latin American part of the Halo tournament at the end of January, while it also held two more events in London and Mexico City last month to determine which gamers made it through to the finals.
Meanwhile, fellow technology giant HP also teamed up with the group at last year’s EGX gaming exhibition – the largest of its kind in the UK.
HP has also just become the first official partner of Gifinity’s inaugural Gfinity Elite Series tournament, which will see the competing teams kitted out with HP’s latest high performance laptops and other gaming products.
On top of that, the computer game tournaments organiser entered into a strategic partnership with MediaCom, one of the world’s leading media agencies.
eSports will generate more than £1bn, specialist says
eSports analytics firm Newzoo recently estimated that eSports will generate more than £1bn in global revenue by 2020, while its audience will double to nearly 600mln people in the same timeframe.
“It has the potential to become one of the top five sports in the world,” said Newzoo’s Peter Warman.
eSports reportedly generated £400mln in revenue around the world last year, reaching a global audience of about 320mln people.
Even major European football clubs are jumping on the bandwagon.
French outfit Paris Saint-Germain moved into gaming last October and signed three of the world’s leading gamers to its new franchise.
Closer to home, Manchester City and West Ham have already brought in FIFA video gamers to represent their respective clubs.