In a significant development and move aimed to give thrust to the growing popularity of ESports, globally, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has announced that it has partnered with the National Olympic Committee of Saudi Arabia to host the inaugural edition of Olympic ESports Games.
This major development comes as an aftermath of the Olympics Executive Board officially proposing the creation of the same games. This ground-breaking step follows the IOC’s recent announcement that the IOC Executive Board (EB) has established the Olympic Esports Games.
“Today, every country will look at ESports as an Olympic medal-winning opportunity – this is a game changer for the industry. As India witnesses a strong performance at the Paris Olympics, our appetite for growth in the sector corresponds to the country’s highly commanding Economic status in the world. At the core, ESports sits in the realms of data and a youth-driven sector, India would like to both aspire for sporting glory with a sound adoption of ESports as a sport and also remain conscious of protecting our consumer-driven market make sure all safeguards are in place to incubate our young talent and pivot into a true global ESports powerhouse,” according to Abhishek Issar, Founder, UNIV Sportatech and Founding Member, FEAI (Federation of ESports Associations India)
“Afterall, we have the market, we need to pivot as suppliers (creators is the second step) of hardware & software to the rising phenomenon of ESports. The scope of growth sits with the Indian State Governments to adopt ESports as a sport and seriously launch a talent identification program with the 2025 Games in mind.”
The rise in popularity of ESports is no less than extraordinary. The segment has grown in leaps and bounds with demand for online gaming reaching new levels and with access to the Internet within hand reach, ESports is becoming increasingly popular. According to the State of Indian Gaming Report, 2022 compiled by Lumikai and AWS, the ESports industry in India is poised to attain new heights of success and profitability in the coming years.
The segment is expected to reach a market capitalization of USD 140 million by 2027 – up from USD 40 million in 2022 – an estimated growth of 32% CAGR. Globally, ESports market size was valued at USD 1.22 billion in 2019 and is poised to touch 5.48 billion by 2031 – growing at a CAGR of 21% in the forecast period 2024-2031.
In the same measure, players in the ESports category grew four-fold between 2021 and 2022 (from 150,000 to 600,000) and future projections estimate this number to reach 15,00,000 by the end of 2027.
