The fun and immersive world of eSports and Games Streaming will be worth $3.6 billion globally by 2025 up 70% from its current value of $2.1 billion in 2021.
A new report by Juniper research (PDF), a market research and analytics firm, predicts the massive growth to be driven by subscription spend to streaming platforms and advertising spend over streams.
ESports, multiplayer video games played competitively for spectators by professional gamers, have been emerging as a thriving industry in recent years.
In 2019, this industry was worth $1 billion. And last year, the industry was projected by other research bodies to hit $3 billion. According to Juniper, COVID-19 threw eSports into the spotlight and began to make it more prominent.
Apparently, the firm claims that 1-in-9 persons of the global population by 2025 will be eSports viewers.
Regardless of the numbers we look out for, the question you're probably asking is, where does Africa play in this global boom? It's apparently very little.
Juniper predicts that the Asia Pacific region will represent 50% of the projected eSport viewers by 2025 while Latin America will experience key growth.
The top earners from eSports as of 2019 consist mainly of Asia, Europe, and North American countries.
Professional sports participation requires high-speed broadband, a rarity in most parts of Africa. High latency will surely make online gaming in Africa a passing hobby for a select few, rather than a full-time job for many young gamers.
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There's also the question of affordability since a recent report suggests Nigeria has the least affordable Internet in the world. Besides South Africa, other African countries also rank low for Internet affordability.
Six months ago, Oluwanifemi explored why Africa is not ready for the eSports boom. Now is probably the right time to revisit it.
