eSports fan base growing faster than daily fantasy sports
News on 25 Aug 2016
News on 25 Aug 2016
The 2016 Gaming Report from Adobe Digital Insights reveals that the social following of eSports is growing faster than almost all other traditional sports.
The social following of eSports is now larger than the National Football League, National Hockey League, and Major League Baseball and trails behind only the National Basketball Association.
Adobe Digital Insights analysed more than 20 million social interactions between June 2015 and July of this year, and 2.5 billion visits to retail gaming and gaming-related websites from January 2015 to July 2016, to gain an insight into user conversations about topics such as eSports and augmented and virtual reality technology.
Sources analysed included Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram and YouTube.
“Esports had a 57 percent annual growth rate in followers, meaning it is growing faster than other sports. Esports will be a winner in the next couple of years in following, fandom, and excitement. It’s ever-growing and morphing, while traditional sports are static,” predicted Becky Tasker, managing analyst at ADI.
The ADI study also reported a massive increase in social media interest in augmented and virtual reality in the last 18 months by gamers, but notes that marketers appear to be in slow in picking up on the trend.
The findings reveal a massive uptick in mentions of augmented and virtual reality technology – a 548 percent increase on Twitter alone since January 2015.
Between Q1 2016 and Q2, social mentions of four brands synonymous with virtual reality increased 14 percent (Oculus, HoloLens, Playstation VR and HTC Vive). Individually, HTC’s Vive is proving particularly attractive, overhauling the other brands with a 115 percent increase from the first quarter of 2016 to the second this year.
