Esports is on the rise.
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Nielsen: Esports fans follow an average of 5.7 games

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

Nielsen has been a trusted researcher of television habits for decades, and now it has begun to explore the popularity of esports. In its first in-depth report on the industry, Nielsen found that the audience is growing fast, but esports fans are unique and hard to pin down compared to traditional sports.

For starters, esports fans follow an average of 5.7 different games and 2.6 genres — a testament to the diversity of games and the fact that gamers aren’t wedded to just a single game.

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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.