Business of Esports TV: YouGov Insights: Esports Fans

(Livestream #133)

In this segment, we discuss some statistics from our friends at YouGov (https://www.youtube.com/user/YouGovChannel/featured), specifically the numbers on hard-core esports fans.

The Business Of Esports brings you news, debates, and all the information you need to know about the gaming sector, the world’s fastest-growing market. With Paul “The Profit” Dawalibi leading the charge, and a variety of special guests, BoE TV is the only place to find insider information on the esports industry!

Check out the full livestream here:

Paul Dawalibi 1:05:50
And they actually sent me a bunch of really interesting statistics this week on eSports. Betting and and also the riot Apple debate. So I just want to bring up some of these and get your guys thoughts because there’s a few of these that are really interesting. They pulled so they pulled a bunch of people, right? They do these huge surveys. to sort of understand what people like and what people are doing. Let me just throw out the first step. The first that’s kind of generic, and I think no one’s going to be surprised by this. But 50% of people in the US 18 to 34 say they’re either diehard eSports fans, or they watch gaming streams. Is anyone surprised? 50%? Yeah, five, zero of 18 to 34 in the US either consider themselves diehard eSports fans, or watch gaming streams? Anyone shocked by this? I was surprised. That’s a big number.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:33
I know kinda that’s shocking to me. I don’t know. 50 is a huge number half

Paul Dawalibi 1:07:38
diehard, right? Or they’re watching like streams, Twitch, etc.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:43
I guess there’s room for interpretation on the question. You know, I hang out with a lot of 14 to 18. So it’s much higher for me. So that seems low to me. But yeah, I mean, if I’m looking at the the 3025 to 34 range, I guess that evens it out?

Unknown Speaker 1:07:55
Yeah, I suppose Yeah, I guess I it’s just crazy to hear, I guess it makes sense really considering everything that’s been happening in the past year, like how popular Warzone is like and all these other games like, it makes sense. But just to hear it, I guess from a statistical standpoint is ridiculous. 50%. Damn,

Paul Dawalibi 1:08:14
that’s impressive. It’s impressive. Let me touch on the esports betting stuff because, you know, I’ve in the context of eg and some of the things I’ve talked about from an Esports betting perspective, there’s really interesting stats here on eSports betting, in the US just in the US, supposedly 15% of all adults would say they’re interested in eSports betting, which is a lot. If you think of like the number of US adults. This is a very large number. And, and what’s interesting is the crossover between sports and eSports is much larger than I think even I expected I knew there was like a lot of potential cross sell. But supposedly, almost 20% of American NFL fans would be interested in betting on eSports 26% of NBA fans are interested in betting on eSports. So you have like literally almost a quarter of the two biggest, you know, traditional sports, framed like leagues and populations interested also in betting on eSports. Let’s see. Sorry, I don’t know if you have thoughts on that. What is that? I knew there was crossover, right? Because I think people who like to bet like to bet right and will bet on anything if they can. But I think there was always in my mind, a stigma coming from the traditional sports people around eSports, right? Like, this is for kids. This is right. And to have a quarter of the betting population of these two huge traditional sports say, Hey, I would also bet on eSports

Unknown Speaker 1:09:55
Yeah, I think it’s a no small part due to the NBA to K leads. Efforts to relocate and advise, like they, they worked with the NBA hand in hand over the past couple of years to up end what the 2k League used to be. And they’ve got most of the brands working with them now. And they did stuff in China too. That’s the biggest thing for me. They did the 2k League combine, I want to say in China, I’m not sure what it was specifically, but the UK league is active in China. And so what that says to me is that they, you know, if they’re talking to this audience that already knows betting, especially in the context of basketball, if you’ve got money coming in from all these sources, and they’re, you know, like you said, people who bet are going to want to bet, I think it really does make sense, a quarter is surprising. But I think to Lindsay, Lindsay’s point, totally makes sense. Like, I think 50% I can’t get over quarter definitely makes more sense in my books.

Paul Dawalibi 1:10:46
Well, so let’s run this down a bit further. If you look at eSports fans, so let’s narrow the population from all adults, just two people who consider themselves eSports fans 42.5% say they would bet on eSports. Like, literally almost half of all eSports fans are interested in betting on eSports.

Lindsay Poss 1:11:09
Right. But I would also be interested in knowing like how many NFL fans that?

Paul Dawalibi 1:11:16
Yeah, what did you guys guess that that number may be smaller than the total number of people.

Unknown Speaker 1:11:20
It’s a little weird to me, because in my circles, like, you know, knowing all the people that I know, in eSports and gaming, I just don’t know anyone that’s actually ever bet on eSports ever. like they’ve bet Counter Strike skins for stuff like that, but not money to bet on a specific game. So I believe the numbers, but

Lindsay Poss 1:11:43
right, but it’s also hard. There’s not like office pools for eSports tournaments right now. Right? Yeah, just yeah. The more access that’s out there, like, people, I would imagine that people are, are imagining similar scenarios in you know, March Madness, or the Super Bowl or whatever, where it’s extremely easy to place a bet. Whether that’s like a neighborhood. I mean, my mother in law does those little scorecard things every year with like, 20 bucks and or whatever. And if you have a seven at the end of the quarter, you win. I don’t know, when those kinds of things become more accessible when there’s a when people decide what medium to watch these on. And it’s consistent when there’s a league that has set rules or that people can follow very easily on a familiar medium, and that you Overwatch League, your exclusivity with YouTube. When all those things happen when the accessibility raises, I think that people can absolutely imagine I don’t think people are imagining doing it right now in the way that you’re that you might think I think people are imagining the ease and accessibility with which they can bet on other things or have seen other chances to bet and saying, Oh, yeah, I would do that for eSports provided that there’s an opportunity.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:56
So also to your earlier point, Lindsay, the fact that like we don’t we don’t currently know what the percentage of you know, football, for example, enthusiast bet on football, comparative to the entire football, you know, demographic, you know, take that to eSports here and see how large it is. Especially with with 2k. I think that’s just a cry for for soccer for for every industry to follow the bat basketball in two K’s to Jim’s point to follow their success in their partnership and what they’ve done right? If they converted a quarter or at least if they were interested a quarter of all fans to that in that field. Why wouldn’t every other sport do the same and say, Hey, I already think everyone should have followed the NBA touquet because how successful they’ve been before in particular and I mean soccer, but traditional football but but yeah, I would love to know what percentage of now please cut me off

Lindsay Poss 1:13:49
the sports thing and then you know, the quarter of NBA and then he says NFL players. That doesn’t surprise me not because the the NBA in particular has been spectacular about incorporating eSports. And even the players themselves are super into it. But I don’t see that as the driving factor for people being both NBA and eSports fan. I see it more as an age thing. Because with baseball, the average person is like 60 years old. I bought the crossover. There’s like 3% Yeah, but like, kids grow up with eSports. And they grow up with the NBA like, it just grew to like, exactly like all of my friends playing to Kate and wanted. No, it just it just to me, I see it more as a generational shift and the fact that NBA and NFL have managed to maintain their audiences through generations, whereas other sports I think, failed miserably. And that’s why I see that crossover happening.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:42
No, I mean, you really raise a great point in baseball specifically, how much do you think baseball and overall Sony may have some shot themselves in the foot by creating MLB the show to be exclusive to the PlayStation console like wouldn’t have been bigger would its cultural impact have been bigger, right? would people be betting now on MLB the show matches if they were able to play them from a younger age, I don’t know. It’s just like they had the perfect storm of things going against them. And in the terms of baseball, where’s the demographic was old, no one was able to play the games, and it just kind of disappeared.

Paul Dawalibi 1:15:21
It’s like, it’s like, you know, show business because that would have been the perfect segue to our last topic. Jimmy, did you have a thought?

Unknown Speaker 1:15:29
I just wanted to add one thing before we transition I hate putting them on blast. But you see Chris Park, you know, who was an executive in MLB. And he left to become CEO of Genji right. And that kind of just I think perfectly embodies what we’re talking about here.