A marketer's dream: League of Legends, Dota 2 help e-sports rack up 2.4 billion viewer hours in 2013

While marketers and content creators worry over people cutting cable in favor of Netflix and other streaming-video services, the generation that is growing up right now might not ever even care to get cable in the first place. They’re too busy watching competitive gaming online.

In 2013, people spent 2.4 billion hours watching e-sports video, according to a report from industry research group IHS Technology (via Gamasutra). That’s up from 1.3 billion in 2012, and IHS expects that number to continue growing over the next several years. By 2018, the firm projects consumers will spend 6.6 billion hours watching competitive gaming each year. This is reflection of e-sports surging popularity both in terms of a participatory activity as well as a spectator sport. Games like League of Legends, Dota 2, and Starcraft II have a huge global audience — and the vast majority of those people are young gamers that marketers desperately want to reach but can’t find through traditional advertising avenues.