As a platform that supports access to better goods and services by marketing and promoting businesses, Bizna Digital Services has been pondering over the whole question of Esports and why this novel idea has not caught up like bushfire in Kenya and indeed, in Africa.
Generally, Esports describes the world of competitive, organized video gaming where competitors from different leagues or teams face off in the same games that are popular with gamers at home.
With Esports, teams of people play against each other at a professional level and win huge sums of money as prizes. In developed markets, Esports players are contracted by different organisations the same way a football player or basketball player would be and then they form teams.
Some of the most popular Esports video games are Fortnite, League of Legends, Counter-Strike, Call of Duty, Overwatch and Madden NFL, to name a few.
Out there, Esports games vary, ranging from shooters such as Counterstrike:Global Offensive esports and Call of Duty esports to many other genres like sports titles and battle royale games all constituting tournaments and events every year during which hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars in prizes are up for grabs.
So Popular
People across the world love tuning in and watching the pros play each other in competitive matches. It is a question of fans loving to watch their favorite sport played at the highest level.
Today, the Esports industry is worth over a billion dollars and growing fast. For instance, Prize pools for both the 2019 Dota 2 International and the 2019 Fornite World Cup surpassed $30 million.
Take the case of Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf, professional Fortnite gamer, who at only 16-years-old, won $3 million at the most recent tournament, making it the largest cash grab by a single player in the history of Esports.
The Meteoric rise of eSports
Make no mistake. The meteoric rise of Esports is not by chance. In 2019 when the Esports market size notched $1 billion, almost half of that revenue came from sponsors.
The other big contributors after sponsorship is media rights and advertising. Since they are not hooked to traditional media, the Esports audience prefers livestreaming where gamers between 18 – 30-year old spend 77 per cent of their time watching other people play online as opposed to watching them on broadcast sports channels.
Opportunity abounds for Esports in Kenya
From the foregoing, there is no doubt that Esports is a fast-growing phenomenon in the world. However, Kenya known for its tech innovation seems not to register anywhere in the realms of Esports. The question Bizna is asking is why this is the case. Could it be that Esports is akin to golf in Kenya where the cost barrier has left out the majority by default?
Just looking at how fast the industry is growing globally, Bizna believes that it will just be a matter of time before a local entity grabs the moment to convert this opportunity into a money making machine, locally, regionally and internationally but with a product that is developed, marketed and operated from the Kenyan or African soil.
At Bizna, we are convinced that a huge opportunity for Esports exists in Africa. However, the winner will be a company or a person able to figure out how to break down Esports in Africa and take it to the people in manner similar to how Equity Bank or Safaricom took their services to the masses through the bottom of the pyramid approach.