With our business unit ESPORTS CONSULTANTS, we have been advising and supporting professional international Esports teams and organisations in establishing themselves in Berlin as an IT location since 2015.
Whether re-location service, event management, sponsorship, or strategy consulting – with our service portfolio we support the business goals of Esports organisations as well as the professional and personal needs of pro-gamers and team members.
In addition, we accompany companies from “traditional” industries as they enter the exciting Esports universe.
Find out more about our Esports services here:
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What is Esports?
Esports (electronic sport) is the competitive playing of computer games. The history of Esports goes back to the 1950s with the invention of video games such as „Tennis for Two“.
The first recorded “computer game competition” assumably goes back to the game “SPACEWAR”. At a self-created tournament – the “Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics”, 24 students at Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Laboratory played for a year’s subscription to the “Rolling Stone”. An article about the game and this event by Stewart Brand was published in the December 7, 1972 issue of Rolling Stone.
Due to the rapid development of the computer industry in the 1990s, the expansion of the Internet and the nationwide spread of broadband connections, eSports has developed into an online pastime for a rapidly growing global following. The “Red Annihilation Tournament” of the first-person shooter “Quake” is often called the first real eSports tournament. The tournament involved 2,000 players. The winner of the tournament received the Ferrari from chief developer John Carmack. A few weeks after the tournament, in June 1997, Angel Munoz founded the “Cyberathlete Professional League” (CPL), one of the first computer game leagues. For years, CPL was one of the most professional organizers of eSports tournaments.
Since the 2000s, eSports has become a global phenomenon and eSports has found its way into the professional world. Especially with the free availability of online streaming, such as via the live streaming video portal “twitch.tv”, the number of eSports enthusiasts exploded.
In Germany, the number of online gamers is estimated at well over 30 million. Almost 100 million people worldwide are registered for the fantasy game League of Legends alone, which was released in 2009.
Today, online games are organized in different leagues worldwide – like traditional football – and world championships take place in large arenas in front of sold-out houses and with millions of spectators worldwide following the events online. The number of viewers – whether playing themselves or not – for eSports matches and events is almost 443 million worldwide.
The global Esports turnover in the same year was around 40 billion US dollars. The global revenue generated by professional eSports in 2019 was around 958 million US dollars – with a rapid development over the last few years. The global market volume for eSports revenue is estimated at 1.6 billion US dollars for the year 2023. (Sources: Statista & Newzoo, 2020).
