Attracting more than gamers - Esports as a social event

[Music] hi I'm Serena Holmes and I'm marketing director for Jinxy sports TV as you can see I'm here to speak about how he spots is becoming or has become more than just competitive gaming but is becoming social events and attracting more than gamer first of all I would like to show you something about Jinxy sport TV I promise it's going to be shocked but I think it's important to see what kind of content and in sport TV channel shows [Music] [Music]

so we know that eSports is a phenomenon but how big is it and who is this audience so as you can see I quite like this slide - in 2018 the eSports audience is expected to reach 380 million people 215 of which are occasional occasional viewers they are young 50 % of them are under 35 digitally native and predominantly male so the typical millennial basically in 2017 so last year new zoo studied the community around each eSports game and something very interesting is that the communities are made of people who only play some people who play and watch and some people who actually only watch in reality 32% of the eSports viewers do not play the game that they watch it is very interesting and you can actually see that 26% of those players do not

watch eSports who do not what she spots actually play so competitive eSports if you look at the definition is competitive gaming in a 1v1 or 5v1 basically format team versus team format so how is it transforming into a social event attracting more than viewer than players and is it actually surprising well it's not really I think everyone saw that coming first of all because it's in our blood as is both viewers and Millennials if you ask for what values are important to Millennials sharing diversity and community are systematically quoted it is also because we are social animals and contrary to what people think we are not looking to play on in our basement and just facing a screen it is all about communicating on social networks and we like to connect with our plans it is not so surprising either because we actually

say it when when asked why people watch eSports 89 percent say that it's to improve their own gameplay 83 that it watch a game that they active participate in on a professional level 40% because of the competition and basically the stress but also 58% say that it's because of the community and the culture surrounding the sports and 49 because of the stories surrounding team and players that so not only the tournament itself but everything that evolves around the spot it's only natural eSport is huge it's split across every country in the world so it's only natural that those millions of players would gather into communities they share common interest and this volume made us create community dedicated platforms and tools so that we could engage and discuss together and it's not also it's also not a surprise because gaming has

always been about community and sharing the same interests and so most of you may know this player hits smoothie from cloud nine League of Legends player and he will tell you why and how he met his friends I guess maplestory was just a game that I played going up because my mostly because my cousins were playing it a lot and they kind of just dragging me into it and I eventually like loved it because I'd a lot of friends and a lot of people there and like that's something that I didn't really struggle with a school but like I didn't really have like close friends and maplestory was just something that like brought us together and like it was a good time yeah definitely like at drinks high school or junior high I definitely did have a lot of friends but I didn't know that you consider them like like I would share everything with like no problem like not best friends I have some best friends of course but like the people I met online I could like trust my life with like it's just really really like

good friends I've known for like couple years and playing with consistently like every day after going got home from school and stuff so yeah they're just like I trust a lot people and that may not be a good thing but like yeah I just choose your friends wisely I guess so how does this tendency manifest itself in eSports right now first of all you will see that is what is very social through the life chats everyone who's watching twitch knows that the live and the twitch chat is super important is actually probably one of the keys to twitch success and live show our live content is success can be based on how engaged and how active the chat is so this shows you the I am csgo final from Katowice earlier this year and you can see that during the final more than 900 messages were posted on the chat per minute so that's basically from the three and more than three thousand three hundred thousand people chat watching the content

everyone was in the chat posting and commenting and they were all in the same room commenting about the same thing and I actually think it isn't quite wise well that they chose a room and everyone was in the same room to discuss about the same content another chat solution is discord they tripled its the user base in one year and they went from 45 million to 135 million in May 18 19 million users per day they that's what they claimed at least and if you look at for example the official fortnight discord account that has more than 200,000 members it's not just people want to organize their next game it's people who want to chat with people who share the same interest and just be with friends basically you can also saw it see it on socials and for example I am Katowice again but ESL record it's six point five million engagement on social

last earlier this year about their competition and has someone said everyone in eSports is somehow connected on socials at some point during the day it is very visible in eSports arenas and the number of events that have been created around eSports so I am Katowice again in March earlier this year three-day event tournament and Expo 169 peeps thousand people attended this year just to compare it is twice the number of people who attended the hibi World Cup final and it's more than doneghy united the UK's most famous music festival very important to 60% of a sports fan expect that or want to attend a live event this year I will show you a video made from by another his box platform and you will see how people react and they actually say with

their own words why they like a sports event so in all of us here grown older in our children grow older well tell them a story about how modern counter-strike was born in this arena how it was the first event when counter-strike was really painted for the thousands of people [Music] I come to every sport event what I can I

was yesterday there I was saying since free I am in the right the feeling of this place is unbelievable we can watch together and this applause and all of this is incredible [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] I'm playing a lot of csgo with friends and good time to meet other people who are also playing this game it's a good place to visit new people and to seek out pro players play on the highest level of girls [Music]

you are on a snowboarding trip today and we are on our way back and stopping here to mix the traditional sports on snow and eSports here and plays and this is my second cosplay kitty cat Katerina from from wake up a goose do you think your count becomes more eSports events in the future yeah I think so they are the future so we have to we have to

attempt to you know keep up with with the times so it's interesting to see that at one of the best and yeah highest level gameplay and eSports tournament people come to meet other people and just spend time with people who share the same interest but I am is not the only event for example in Birmingham earlier this year seven thousand people attended the first dota 2 major event in the UK fifteen thousand people that indeed colony last year Hayate sold more than 15,000 seats in less than 12 minutes in 2016 for their finals and in France for example 5,000 people attended a TrackMania Cup event earlier this year you can also see that it is becoming a social event in the way that tournament organizers sell their contents they not only sell an access to the tournament does they sell experience packages and you can actually share that with up to

10 people who go with you you can see it in bars and viewing parties organized and being built everywhere in the world so meltdown is one of them it's a bar network available in 30 countries dedicated to a sport and eSports fans first about 6 they claimed was 60,000 gamers per month across their network I had a tailor but I'm gonna try it yeah I did the other one for most recently phonetic so the very well-known eSports team launched its own bar in Madrid ahead of the LCS summers in final and you can see that people were there just to exchange it's more than just about eSports it's about the way they feel and they relate with this team to this team so we've seen that each box is more than so sure that the content is now so adapting and showing that it is dedicated to help this trend and help

the audience you will see new and more platforms involved everyone talked about ESL deals signed with Facebook and Twitter some were very unhappy some didn't care but still Facebook committed to broadcast more than 5,000 hours of eSport content from ESL and Twitter 1.5 with ESL endemic you can see it see it in the way new community orientated initiatives have been launched and I very much like and the overwatch League it is 20 so it's based on 20 franchises city based and they add ten point eight million viewers for the finals to me it's very interested because interesting because it's based on a city so people who are not interested in eSports world of don't know a spot can still relate to the city based team and love the colors even though they don't watch it I'm gonna go fast more community orientated organisations and now being successful in this part

doesn't mean that you have win tournaments it means that you have more and more means that you have to be successful with the community and are the most engaged and the biggest community but it doesn't mean that you have to win the next tournament and finally new forms of contents so talked about shoulder content but more and more you will see content created about his sport that is not only the live content or the live tournaments it's stories about how players became those players how they came to join this team for example we have unjinx showed created around the SKT t1 team so it's a very famous League of Legends team and this show this documentary is not about their success it's about what makes them at him and what kind of challenges they face and who who for example faker is so this is a quick trailer [Music]

[Music] [Music] so this is this kind of content very high quality content and I can say it it was introduced by jinx so I don't feel bad saying it but this kind of content available on a TV channel on a network for example a traditional TV network that proved that eSports is now attracting more than the eSports core fan base but also appealing to a wider audience and that you can actually discuss that with your parents crewson's everyone now knows about eSports thank you very much it's yeah so I think I'm perfect don't worry that's right you'll be built in plenty

of time yes don't worry we've built in plenty of time so there's gonna be a panel up next but you've actually got a couple of ITER's before that starts so well there any questions first so then before we move on yeah there's a question over here I want to ask about jinxes specifically I'm like if you could tell me like how well it's doing cuz I come from working with movie star riders who have a TV channel in Spain as well for eSports and like I don't know the numbers specifically but it wasn't really working very well it's not working very well like the content is good and people watch it on twitch but so far they haven't like managed to get people to actually watch it don't like television so how is it going freaking us so jinx they have two different things first one of genes success and one of the proofs of our success is that there's real appetite from traditional networks to bring on an eSports TV

channel so for example we are available in 50 million homes worldwide and this number is increasing increasing almost on a monthly basis we have new launches so that's from a more casual and more professional appetite the old the other success is that we have about 2 million unique viewers per month watching our content which is quite good to be honest so it is working and I think the main thing is that we don't produce twitch like content and we adapted to TV and we know that it's not only to spark off fans but we have sometimes to take people by the end and explain it's literally differently than we would on Twitch [Music]