BRYCE BLUM AUGUST 2023
<aside> <img src="/icons/chevrons-vertical_gray.svg" alt="/icons/chevrons-vertical_gray.svg" width="40px" /> While another essay in this collection looks at the monetization of fans, it’s important that we also explore esports fandom more broadly. I frequently hear esports “experts” make conclusive statements about the nature of esports fandom, such as “esports fans will always care more about players than teams”, “localization doesn’t work in esports because esports fans don’t think that way”, or “esports fandom can’t be generational because popular games change too quickly”. Some of these takes may wind up being true, but the reality is that esports fandom is still far too nascent to draw sweeping conclusions surrounding how it will look in 50, or even 10 years.
This essay explores the current dynamics of esports fandom to better understand our strengths and weaknesses in this area. While reasonable minds can disagree about how to better engage esports fans and approaches will necessarily vary by game and stakeholder, it’s clear that the esports industry needs to invest more time, money, and attention into generating strong, lasting social and emotional ties that connect esports fans to stakeholders other than their favorite players. Such ties are an indispensable component of the sports ecosystem and a major factor in revenue generation; esports can and must do better on this front.
</aside>
Let’s start with the obvious: every different esport is going to have different demographics. The fan base of Call of Duty looks very different from that of League of Legends or Pokémon. While it's not practical to get into every individual esports scene’s demographics, it’s important to recognize at the outset that these differences exist and that attempts to increase esports fan engagement must necessarily look different game by game. [1]
With that said, let’s set the stage at the 50,000 foot level before diving into what drives esports fandom. Esports fans are a niche subset of the broader gaming community. There are roughly 2.7 billion gamers in the world [2], 540 million of whom are esports fans in some capacity [3].
Market research on esports fan demographics vary by report, but ultimately reach similar conclusions. Esports fans are young (but getting older), lean male (though female audience share is on the rise), and relatively affluent.
Age
The median age of a US esports fan in 2020 was around 29; globally that number is a bit higher, at 32 [4]. Roughly 60% of esports fans are between the ages of 16-35 [5]. While the overall audience is still quite young, it’s starting to age and esports fan interest in the 35-44 year old demographic in particular is spiking [6].
It’s not hard to see why. Let’s take a look at major gaming console and game releases in the US as gaming rose in prominence:
While we can’t pinpoint an exact date, this suggests gaming started to penetrate mainstream consciousness in the US sometime in the mid nineties. Put differently, virtually everyone born before ~1980 didn’t get exposed to gaming in their childhood and likely has very different gaming habits as a result. That’s roughly half to the US population, depending on where the line is drawn [13].
For people below this line, gaming is a deep part of their culture. For people above the line, they have been exposed to gaming and may even become hardcore gamers, but it’s not part of their DNA. They weren’t born with it. It’s not cool for their generation. This isn’t just common sense; it’s born out by the data.
via Marketing Charts
via Marketing Charts
With that said, one shouldn’t assume the esports audience will simply age along with the industry itself. It’s possible that esports fan engagement will dwindle with time as personal and professional responsibilities increase. This hasn’t been the case with traditional sports where the audience continues to get older, but there simply isn’t pertinent data to definitively say how the esports audience evolves in the decades to come.