Esports panel at Milken event, left to right: Steve Cohen of AEG, Ann Hand of Super League Gaming, Dean Takahashi of GamesBeat, Ramon Herrera of Tencent, Nate Nanzer of Overwatch League, and Kent Wakeford of Gen.G.
Esports panel at Milken event, left to right: Steve Cohen of AEG, Ann Hand of Super League Gaming, Dean Takahashi of GamesBeat, Ramon Herrera of Tencent, Nate Nanzer of Overwatch League, and Kent Wakeford of Gen.G.
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How investors should think about the esports gold rush

Last week was a big moment for esports as investors gathered at the Milken Global conference to listen to a panel I moderated on how fast the esports phenomenon — which is two decades plus in the making — has begun to grow.

No longer are we arguing about whether people will watch someone else place games. The discussion is now about how many hundreds of millions of people are doing it. The fact that this discussion was happening at the Milken event in Beverly Hills, California, shows that big money and the super rich have descended on the esports explosion.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.