Nielsen eSports Playbook details value of industry for all stakeholders

Nielsen has done what it does best, putting hard numbers to the entertainment industry, for eSports fans and industry stakeholders.

Set to be officially unveiled later on Tuesday, October 3 at the Esports Live event at Leaders Week in London, the Nielsen eSports Playbook is a wealth of data that tells a clear story of how the industry is growing.

Although aimed at industry stakeholders such as content sponsors, the playbook can tell the average eSports fan a lot about which direction eSports are headed as well.

Nielsen’s data is a mixture of measurement of habits and recording of demographics of self-described eSports fans in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Nielsen says that it will release similar studies on China, Japan and North Korea later this year.

In the United States, Nielsen says that the viewing audiences for eSports are the strongest in the world. 66 percent of U.S. eSports fans say they are likely to stream an eSports event live, and 42 percent report the same likelihood to watch a live eSports event on television. That doesn’t mean that U.S. audiences are the most robust for attendance in a venue where an eSports competition is being held, however. U.S. eSports fans are actually the least-likely to attend an eSports event in person among the four nations surveyed.

Another area in which U.S. eSports fans stand out is their interest in following the social media accounts of brands who sponsor eSports. U.S. fans are 25 percent extremely or very interested in following such brands, compared to 17 percent in France, 16 percent in Germany and 15 percent in the U.K.

American eSports fans are also different from fans elsewhere in which games they play themselves. Call of Duty is the most popular game in this category, slightly edging out Grand Theft Auto. Fans in the U.S. are three percent more likely to play Call of Duty than fans in the U.K., 13 percent more likely than fans in France, and 19 percent more likely than fans in Germany.

That doesn’t mean that eSports fans in the United States aren’t diverse in what they follow as spectators, however. U.S. eSports fans average following 5.7 different game titles, compared to just 4.5 in the U.K. and France and 3.8 titles in Germany.

While it’s not strongly divergent from the rest of the results, U.S. fans also boast the strongest favorable perception of brand involvement in eSports. 58 percent of eSports fans in the United States view such activity favorably, while only five percent perceive it negatively.

The brands who sponsor eSports content and events, whether endemic (inherently used in the course of the activity) or non-endemic, receive favorable opinions from fans due to their involvement. Nielsen says that eSports fans are among the most active viewers of television programming and Internet videos, watching 4.5 and 4.3 hours of the respective content types per week.

What that should tell current and potential sponsors of eSports content is that not only does the sponsorship have a massive reach, but the likelihood of the product/service being viewed favorably is high as well.

In turn, that should signal to fans that the industry is going to continue to expand in the United States, perhaps faster than anywhere else. U.S. fans are not only the most likely to consume eSports media regularly, but also the most likely to be converted into consumers of other products and services because of their consumption of eSports content.

It’s an obvious snowball effect. As streaming service providers and television broadcasters continue to see high levels of engagement for eSports content, that increases the likelihood that more resources will be devoted to that content. That increased devotion of resources will spur further opportunities for advertising and sponsorship, which makes the broadcasters’ investments in eSports pay off. The increased exposure to more people that results from heavier brand engagement and broadcast time will create more of a demand, and the snowball continues to grow.

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Nielsen’s data lays out a very bright future for eSports in not only the United States, but around the world. As more broadcasters and sponsors spend money to make money in the industry, the real winners of those games will be the players, teams and of course the fans.