E-Sports Gets Big News: New Streaming, Huge Numbers

Steve Anderson : End Game
Steve Anderson
The Video Store Guy
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E-Sports Gets Big News: New Streaming, Huge Numbers

The last couple of days have been very big in terms of new developments for the concept of e-sports, and so I've boiled down the events into a smaller post to provide a nice broad look at the field. There were two critical developments from two big parts of the sector, and this combination bodes very well indeed for e-sports fans.

 

The first bit of news hit yesterday, as Major League Gaming brought out a new streaming platform for e-sports viewers. Found at MLG.TV, the new system involves both a video platform and a matching new video player, which was in beta until its official launch. But given that the pre-launch period saw fully 1.3 petabytes—yes, petabytes—of content go through the service globally, and reports of an extra 1,000 percent growth in overall consumption, it represented a very large-scale slice of news for those who follow e-sports.

 

That alone would be big news for e-sports, but it was followed up by news that was actually almost bigger in comparison. Riot Games put out the word that fully 32 million viewers had shown up for the League of Legends Season Three World Championship event. Held at the Staples Center—where the Los Angeles Lakers normally play—the venue was completely sold out, and viewers online threw in considerable numbers to produce the absolutely breathtaking numbers produced. By way of comparison, that's equivalent to around 84 percent of the population of California, or sufficient to outnumber the city of Los Angeles by a factor of around eight to one.

 

Those two news items together make one development perfectly clear: e-sports is quite clearly catching on. As amazing as the numbers were for the League of Legends Season Three World Championship, it only gets more impressive when compared against more conventional sports. The November 4 entry of NBC Sunday Night Football, for example, brought in 21.09 million viewers, according to Nielsen.com. The Sunday Night NFL Pre-Kick, also on NBC, brought in around 15.87 million viewers. Both of these are lower than the equivalent for League of Legends' big game. NFL Regular Season L (Chicago / Green Bay) on ESPN brought in just over 16.1 million viewers. This is making it quite clear that e-sports is set to be a force to be reckoned with.

 

Not only are some serious numbers coming into the fray, but new infrastructure and new utilities are being developed around these institutions that will hopefully help facilitate more users getting into whole thing as well. The idea that e-sports could be as big as their more conventional alternative not only seems possible, but on some fronts it's happening. Granted, it's a bit unfair to make the comparison between what amounts to League of Legends' Super Bowl and regular-season play, but the numbers are still unsettling enough to make a point at least somewhat clear. There's quite a bit to go, but if things can hold on like this, or even improve, we may well be looking at a future in which video games are right on par with most other sports in the field, where e-sports have the same respect as their more conventional counterparts. That will be a strange day indeed, but a very exciting one all the same.

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