Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick explains why esports is a viable career option.
Electronic sports, most commonly known as esports, is a competitive gaming platform that pits players against each other, often in groups, to win prizes. And it’s taking the world by storm. Reportedly 474 million people watch esports across the globe, and by 2024 the competitive gaming audience is expected to reach 577 million. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick believes it to be a viable career for gifted gamers.
“If you think about professional sports today, whether it’s basketball or football or soccer, there are maybe 3,000 people in the world capable of playing professional baseball and maybe 5,000 people capable of playing professional football. However, hundreds of thousands of people are capable of playing professional video games,” Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said during an appearance on Leadership Live With David Rubenstein.
Kotick continued, “And so when you think about the requirements and the qualifications to get that same thrill, the same sense of accomplishment, meaning, purpose, and also have a career, it’s a real growth opportunity for people. And we’re seeing an explosion of interest in the spectator component of it.”
Statistics About Esports
In 2021, sponsorships and advertising in esports totaled $641 million. Activision Blizzard is a leader in esports leagues. Its competitive gaming properties include the Call of Duty League, Overwatch League, the World of Warcraft Arena World Championship, and Hearthstone Masters. The company held an estimated 21.85% market share, beating out Modern Times Group, Tencent, Valve, Electronic Arts, Nintendo, Team SoloMid, Cloud9, Take-Two Interactive, and Riot Games.
The global esports income reached $1 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach $1.6 billion by 2024. While China currently has the largest esports and gaming community, the United States came in first for prize money with $180 million.
“Sponsorships are an important aspect of modern sports, and esports are no exception. While the epidemic has had an impact on esports, the industry has fared well in comparison to others,” writes Serif Pilipovic, senior editor at levvvel.com. “Despite the epidemic, esports revenue has remained robust, thanks in part to prominent esports sponsorships. There are a lot of significant esports sponsorships because there are so many people participating in esports.”
Pilipovic continued, “Gaming hardware and peripherals is responsible for over 80% of all sponsorship deals in the esports industry. This is followed by furniture and energy manufacturers in second and third place, respectively.”
Is Gaming Good for You?
“There are professional teams with players making [a lot of money] a year. And so I would advocate for a kid who has a proficiency in gaming, that there could be a great career for them as an esports athlete,” Bobby Kotick said.
“For what you get from a cognitive perspective, there’s no question we see that interacting with video games has the ability to meaningfully improve your cognition. It has the ability to improve your spatial relationships with like three dimensions. So there are real benefits. Plus, we’re building social connections with hundreds of millions of people worldwide. We have the chance to create heroes from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities with our games. There’s an enormous opportunity to build tolerance and understanding through video games.”
A recent video game study involving nearly 2,000 children found that children who played video games for three or more hours per day displayed better impulse control and working memory on cognitive skills tests than kids who never played video games.
“This study adds to our growing understanding of the associations between playing video games and brain development,” said Nora Volkow, M.D., the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which supports the ABCD Study, ??the most extensive long-term study of child health and brain development in the United States.
“This study suggests that there may also be cognitive benefits associated with this popular pastime, which are worthy of further investigation.”
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick: You’ll See Fantasy Leagues Emerge
Should gamers expect fantasy to mingle with esports soon? Bobby Kotick said he believes “fantasy leagues [will] emerge. Those fantasy elements are not really incorporated into the games today yet. So I think that’s one direction, and then from a technology perspective, I love the social experiences that people are having through video games.”
He credits the metaverse with elevating the social experience for video game players. “As we start to add a greater dimension of the social experience, they’ll connect people in a way that delivers a lot of meaning, a lot of purposes, and a lot of value that we haven’t seen quite yet. So while it is just emerging, augmented reality and virtual reality over the long term will have a real impact on the type of video game experiences that we can create,” he said.
Bobby Kotick also estimates that gambling will become big in the esports world, too. “We make games of skill. And in most states and in most countries, wagering on games of skill is legal,” Kotick said. “We don’t participate in that today, but I suspect that as the esports leagues become even more prevalent and popular, you will start to see peer-to-peer wagering and broadscale wagering on the outcomes of these kinds of events.”
