Newzoo released a new report about the state of esports and livestreaming for the year so far. According to this report, esports will create quite a bit of revenue before the end of the year — almost $1.38 billion. It also predicts that esports revenues will exceed $1.86 billion in 2025.
The report adds that most of the revenue — about a third — will come from China. Although esports has several revenue streams, Newzoo expects most of it to come from sponsorships. It projects that $837.3 million, almost 60% of esports revenue, will come from sponsorships.
The world loves esports
The report notes that different kinds of esports dominate in different parts of the world. PC esports games dominate the developed markets, such as North America, Europe, China, South Korea, and Japan. Mobile titles are more popular in developing markets, such as Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, Southeast Asia, and India.
Newzoo expects the global esports audience to reach 532 million by the end of the year and 640.8 million by 2025. It also expects huge growth in the games livestreaming industry in general, as it reached 810 million in 2021. Non-gaming content accounted for about 21% of the livestreaming content watched that year.
Twitch was the biggest platform for game streaming in the West, with YouTube Gaming being the second-largest. Last year they clocked nearly 20 billion gaming hours and 4.7 billion gaming hours watched, respectively.