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The esports craze will generate $1.8B a year by 2020

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

It’s no secret that esports, or competitive video gaming, has become big. The question is how big.

Colin Sebastian, analyst at R.W. Baird, estimates that esports will generate more than $1.8 billion in annual revenue by 2020, according to a research report dubbed “esports readying for prime time” released today. While esports is growing fast, Sebastian said it is still in its early stages and could be “the next big thing in media and entertainment.”

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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.