How Can Esports Secure Its Future?

It’s no secret that esports has been on a rocky path for a number of years, whilst viewership numbers and player numbers continue to grow in a massive way would suggest a thriving market, things aren’t so rosy colored behind the scenes as reports of organization instability, inflated player salaries, and huge costs continue to plague the industry. As it stands from older reports, only a tiny handful of esports organizations in history have ever managed to turn a profit with others being something of a money pit and raises the question of longevity in the market.

Much like traditional sporting, there are markets that directly benefit from the esports market but don’t directly impact the monetary side of it, most notably included are these betting sites not on gamstop that promote a huge variety of esports wagering options as the number of matches to bet on, and the number of games with wagering options seems to be increasing day by day.

It’s often important to note that there are difference in betting options between esports and traditional sports too, options don’t exist just in the broadcast matches but options also exist for regular played games by big streamers also pull in different odds and options.

Despite this, betting doesn’t directly impact the bottom line for the teams and other income streams aren’t as lucrative as some believe, all teams have both a content side and a merchandise side but with inflated costs neither seem to be enough to keep teams afloat, in the past teams like 100T have leant more heavily into this than others and it seemed to work for a time but with lackluster results in the games they compete in, the fickle esports audience don’t always stay too loyal for long.

Similarly other teams like Sentinels have also had a huge push on the content side of things, but are also one of the bigger case studies of teams that seem to be on the cusp of whether or not they can keep a competitive roster growing, and the latest being Evil Geniuses off the back of their huge Valorant win announcing that their players are free to explore other options as the team are unable to afford the salaries.

One big push that may change the fortunes of esports and the big organizations comes from broadcasting but is also the most difficult to overcome too – major sports teams receive a huge amount of money from broadcasting rights as networks spend billions every year for the rights to broadcast the games with some of this going directly to the teams. With all games being broadcast live for free over Twitch, and little interest to see esports move to major television networks, this is one of the big hurdles and one of the big revenue streams missing.

Hospitality and ticket sales are another big one, with bigger facilities and arenas being rented each year by Riot Games, Valve, and others, there’s a huge cost incurred by the organizers directly with nothing going back to the teams as there’s no direct involvement, and once again a missing revenue stream that is huge in traditional sporting.

The answer certainly isn’t an easy one, with certain options that work for traditional sporting simply not being possible for esports, but a solution will need to be found sooner rather than later as more teams continue to run into issues and revenue streams for things like sponsorships have slowly started to dry up, whilst esports as a whole isn’t at risk, changes do need to be made to secure both a future and longevity too.