ABSTRACT
This book began its survey of the changing media landscape, with games as a platform. It ends with games as live performance. Esports is a small media sector, but fast growing, global, with a commercially attractively, young and engaged audience. Development of Esports businesses begins with an existing game title. Key Esports are played around League of Legends (aka LoL), Defense of the Ancients 2 (aka Dota 2), Call of Duty (aka CoD), Overwatch, Starcraft and Fortnite. Production in this space requires investment, usually by the game developer itself and sometimes venture capital. Distribution is a unique fusion of online and offline, combining the best of twentieth-century live-event models with the twenty-first century network effect of social media and streaming. Monetisation is multifaceted, an evolving mix of old and the new: advertising (in-game, affiliate marketing and in media channels), event ticketing, programmatic revenues from streaming, licensing from streamers and broadcasters, league sponsorship and even gambling. There are powerful flywheels between distribution and monetisation, whereby increased viewing drives rapidly enhanced ad revenues, sponsorship, game users and licensing. Yet the biggest value may currently reside simply in the marketing of games, and concomitant equity value enhancement for developers. AI tools are being used in Esports for purposes ranging from player training to anomaly spotting in matches and gambling information.
