Business of Esports TV: YouGov Insights – Sports vs Esports

(Livestream 137)

In this segment, we discuss some statistics from our friends at YouGov (yougov.com/gaming-esports), specifically what types of habits esports fans have in comparison to fans of traditional sports.

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 1:12:38
But they sent me actually what’s interesting about about what I got from you guys this week, maybe I don’t know how many of you know, but Riot is actually a customer of yougov. So like Riot relies on UGA for data, and a good friend of Business of Esports Matt Archambault, who’s been on the podcast twice now, who works at Riot has been working with YouGov to build data points around comparing LCS fan, so League of Legends fans, to traditional sports fans across like a number of what they call impactful data points. Okay, so this is this is Riot to the end by the way, this is a sneak peek at this data set. They you got it hasn’t even publicly announced this yet. It’s going to be on their socials coming in the next few weeks. But we’re getting a little sneak peek here. And it’s really cool because it’s Riot working, you know, in conjunction with YouGov here to to build out these these data sets. So let me just bring one up here I have I have two slides here which I want to bring up. And the first here talks about comparing eSports fans to traditional sports fans okay? And and the first let me just the legend here is LCS NBA NFL. Okay, so the purple is LCS fans. The blue is NBA fans, and the red is NFL fans. I’m sorry if you are colorblind. Jimmy. I don’t know what colors these show up as to you.

Jeff Cohen 1:14:49
Base works. This works. Big one medium one, the small one.

Paul Dawalibi 1:14:55
But the first the first data point here was percentage Have people like percentage more likely than the general population? to notice brands who sponsor league events? So they’re looking at how many, like what percentage of the population is more? What percentage is more likely than the general population to notice brands who sponsor league events? Okay, so in other words, if you’re a brand and you sponsor league events, obviously 100% of LCS fans are more likely than the general population to notice those brands, right? If you’re if you’re watching league events, and you’re a league fan, you’re 100% more likely than the general population to notice those brands. What’s interesting is, of the of NBA fans, 57% are more likely to notice brands who sponsor league events. But NBA, but NFL only 28%. So in other words, a basketball fan is twice as more likely than the general population to notice a brand who sponsors League of Legends. In other words, there’s a much more direct correlation between NBA fans and LCS fans than NFL fans, and LCS fans, which I think I don’t know if you guys have a theory on why that is, but LCS fans are 37% more likely than the general population, to engage with ads that are tailored to them. And if you look on the other end of the spectrum, NFL fans only 7% more likely than the general population. In other words, eSports fans are much more likely to engage with ads that are tailored to them. If you look at how much they’re willing, like what percentage is willing to pay more for luxury brands eSports fans 92% more likely than the general population to pay for luxury brands to pay more for luxury brands. In other words, value, that label value that designer brand. versus 16%. For the NFL, the NFL fans just don’t seem to care about any of these things. Which is funny, because you would think the NFL fan being older would be maybe more to pay for a luxury brand. But they’re not like by a huge margin.

William Collis 1:17:21
I mean, this, let’s be honest, this just says eSports or LCS because about the LCS this just says LCS fans are better fans

Paul Dawalibi 1:17:29
and and way more valuable. just scream Yeah,

William Collis 1:17:31
your sponsor more valuable.

Jeff Cohen 1:17:34
Investing in eSports, though, I will say I mean, it strikes me maybe like because how do you quantify someone who says they’re a football fan versus the general population? Like, it feels like maybe the reason why the football fan is not so different from the general population? Because they’re like one in the same person? Because most people are football fans and and are the general population. So maybe there’s some sort of Jeff, the one that’s most interesting to me is the last one that we haven’t touched on yet. It’s because it’s very, not what I would think I mean, maybe it’s something about League of Legends fans, I know, they’ve done a lot of luxury brand, you know, product sponsorship, but like, You’re telling me 83 or 83%, more likely eSports fans are or sorry, League of Legends fans are to think they’re more fashionable, like, that’s a narrative violation. If I’ve heard on like, you know, cameras or not geeks in the base, oh,

William Collis 1:18:27
but this is like, I think of the esports fan and for competitive eSports. Like, I truly think competitive the esports fans, like, have more in common. And this is I’m trying to say it’s nice to have more in common with like the stereotypical jock from an 80s movie. Like that’s like my mental model. And like, do you think like, that handsome quarterback from an 80s film considers himself more than most? Yes. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it’s not the right parallel Exactly. But like, I really think we still carry this baggage of like, Oh, these competitors, gamers and like, just not true anymore. It’s just like, not true.

Jimmy Baratta 1:19:10
Sorry, I think this is fantastic data. And it just reasserts two things from today. And one is like, Why all these orgs are getting into merge plays, right? Because they consider themselves to be fashionable, and the audience receives that. And two, adds an Oculus, you know,

Unknown Speaker 1:19:28
they’re,

Jimmy Baratta 1:19:29
they’re gonna notice I can’t stop it. Like, I’m

Paul Dawalibi 1:19:32
sorry. No, it’s true. But then guys, like, obviously, you guys is a sponsor of the podcast, they’re tremendously supportive of what we do here of the live stream, I should say. And but like this, to me is such a great proof point of data driving business, good business decisions, right? When you have good data. You know, when when, when Louis Vuitton sponsored League, some people looked at that and said, I don’t get it. But when you have the data behind the decision like that, you go, Well, this makes total sense, right? Like management that Louie Have you probably looked at this data, right? Riot is a customer of yougov. So they, they, they, you know, they, they get this data from you. gov and I’m sure they pass it along to brands. And and if you’re Louis and you look at this, you go, this makes a lot of sense. This is why I want to put money into this. And why it makes way more sense to put money into this than into something like the NFL. Like, Jeff, your point was, you know, not a bad one. There are always like confounding variables and things like that. But the difference is so stark, right? Like, we’re not talking about small differences here. This, this is way beyond any potential margin of error. When you’re talking 83% versus 7%. Which I think is incredible. Angela asked question, hang on, let me just read some of these comments before I move on to the I have one other slide like this. Christian says, I wonder what was on the flip side? What percentage less likely to it’s a good question, Christian. I know. What I’m showing you today is just a tease. So like, if you guys follow YouGov on all their socials, which I highly recommend. They have told me that they’re going to be putting out this data on their socials, because it really is quite enlightening for the esports industry as a whole. And I will tease we are going to have Nicole Pike, who’s the head of Esports that you have on the podcast, coming soon, very, very soon. And so you guys will will, I think will enjoy that. Wade says I can’t pick up a Red Bull these days without thinking Red Bull Baron rash. It’s true. It’s true. I mean, it’s the the the connection is very strong. When you’re an Esports. Fan. Angela says they’ve got game they do. What is the age range of people surveyed? Angela, I’m not sure I, if I can get that data for you, though. I can get it for you, in fact, on short notice, so I will message you directly if you are curious. But I have I have that I just don’t have it with me here. Let’s look at the next slide. Guys. The next slide is again, this is all percentage more likely to shop everyday than the general population. And, and here, it’s how frequently you shop online. Right? How much online retail shopping, you’re doing how frequently you’re doing it. And if you look at an LCS Finn, they’re 300% more likely to shop every day online.

William Collis 1:22:29
They That’s crazy. A bigger deal of that they needed an axis break in there something guys like I got it. I got to critique the gravity does that because that is monstress. Like that is a monstrous differential.

Paul Dawalibi 1:22:44
What’s interesting is you like an NFL or an NBA fan is still more likely to shop online to shop every day online than the general population. But like we’re not it’s not even close in terms of how much online retail shopping they’re doing and how frequently they’re doing it. RAMs, he says there’s your stat for the esports small,

Jeff Cohen 1:23:04
does that prove there should be an Esports more or not?

Paul Dawalibi 1:23:11
Twitter usage. An LCS fan is 89% more likely than the general population to use Twitter, compared to only 10%. For example, for an NFL fan, so much less engaged on Twitter. This is an interesting one. Clearly, we know we probably don’t have a lot of NFL fans listening to the podcast. Because NFL fans are minus 1% more likely than the they’re less likely than the general population to listen to a podcast. Whereas LCS fan is 50% more likely than the general population to have listened to a podcast in the last week. So we should be targeting LCS fans for our for The Business of Esports podcast is what we shouldn’t be doing. And then finally, the last one here is streaming services. How about like, Who? Who using who uses a streaming service regularly, like at least weekly, and LCS fan? 95%? Use a streaming service at least weekly? These are pretty close, I would say these are probably even within margin of error within some. And so that one’s an interesting one because it is quite close. Any thoughts on these guys? Anything that stands out to you conclusions? Yes, no? William, you’re muted.

William Collis 1:24:40
I was gonna say the takeaway here is it’s more much more digitally savvy audience and again, it all goes to purchasing, right? It’s like these guys are purchasing differently and presumptively their purchasing better because it’s much easier with a digital product to link to digital sale than it is to be like go into your local target to find it. You know what I mean? You know, then all this It’s just Honestly though these stats are just crazy. You know, whenever I see stats like this, I’m just like, this is you don’t understand the esports consumer, you know, like, you’ve gotta you got to drop your preconceptions, because I suspect a lot of what’s really going on here. And I don’t mean this, this is actually a strength, you got braces, I mean, it’s criticism. It’s just like, this is saying, This is the younger consumer and the new model of consumption. That’s what’s really being said here. This is like proving out that not only eSports fans, we know they’re demographically younger, but they’re behaving on trend with the younger generation, you know. And I think you’re seeing that here in a really compelling way. That makes like, if I were a brand looking at this, I’d be like, yeah, the the implication is, why would you do we’ll look at these other things like these guys spend more or easier to advertise to, and advertise more natively? You know what I mean?

Paul Dawalibi 1:25:52
Yeah. I always find these things extremely eye opening. And I always find them like, I always find the data just very actionable. Like, there’s a lot here if you’re a brand, or if you’re a team or if you’re right, if you’re operating in this ecosystem. There’s a lot here that’s very actionable. And and it’s not always obvious. It’s not like it’s really not always just completely Oh, yeah, that’s just the common assumption. It’s not I mean, the luxury one, I think everyone here was surprised by how big the difference was there. And so I was I was find these interesting. Chris has replaced the three sports with Gen Z versus millennial and Gen X. And yeah, this makes sense. I mean, age for sure. plays a factor here. No question. And I think that’s back to Angeles point, which is the age range of people surveyed, which I can get for you guys. Wade says great data. Thanks for sharing. I mean, wait. Like I said, this is not even out yet. You guys got a sneak peek? They sent me just these two slides. I know there’s a whole report coming out around this. So please, go show you give some love. Give them a follow on Twitter, LinkedIn, wherever, basically, everywhere you can find them and and go check out YouGov.com slash gaming dash eSports. I’m sure it will be posted there when it goes live as well. But like I said, this is part of a much bigger study that they did with Riot Riot as a customer of theirs. And and I think that we’re all going to be very surprised that the data that comes out of it. Angela says can we get their average spend? Angela, I think like I said, I think it’s in the full report. But I don’t. I’m not sure because even I haven’t seen the full report. Christian says the amateur eSports team I’m working with average monthly spend per player on gaming products is 800 a month. Wow. That’s a lot. What are they buying? Every month for 800 bucks.

Jeff Cohen 1:27:46
That’s like Paul type spending

William Collis 1:27:49
for like a day. Like an hour, like an hour.

Paul Dawalibi 1:27:54
Greg says the streaming chart is very surprising surprised NFL and NBA fans stream so much given the older age group. I mean, Greg, it’s streaming services, right? So this would include like Netflix and like Hulu and

William Collis 1:28:07
you know, stuff that is more just everybody’s streaming services today. Like you can’t escape them.

Paul Dawalibi 1:28:11
Yeah. And Angela says, and Nicole rocks, Angela, you’re absolutely right. She does. Like I said, she’s gonna be on the podcast very, very soon. So definitely stay tuned for that. Guys, that that wraps up the yougov segment here. Hopefully everyone enjoyed that we’re gonna keep dry. And doing that every single week. I can’t promise we’re gonna have like really unique stuff like this every single week, but it was cool that we got a sneak peek here.