eSports DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM
In the booming landscape of Twitch streaming and on-line video gaming Professional League tournaments are broadcast live to massive world-wide on-line audiences of tens of millions. Twenty years ago no one would have ever thought that pro gaming would evolve into a multi-billion dollar industry with esports franchise fees upward of twenty million dollars and full-time individual gamer contract salaries of six or even seven figures?
Indeed, we have come a long way from bygone days of parenting rants of… ‘put down that video game controller and get outside and play,’ to a video gaming world of making unheard of salaries at an early age. Streamers and professional online gamers have become the center of a new form of content creation and release. These subjects have all found and live at that intersection of two important driving forces in their lives - what they love to do and what they are highly skilled and excellent at …. and people want to watch them.
The phenomenon of online video game streaming and highly paid professional video gamers is accelerating in popularity and the stage has been set, as in this arena, professional sports are no longer the male-dominated bastion of testosterone and physicality. The differentiators now are intensity, determination, stamina, intelligence and strategy, and women and men can compete head-to-head against each other and even on the same teams. In this place of no boundaries, those with the desire and the tenacity can make it to stardom and riches.
In the new professional on-line gaming world there are massive amounts of money and powerful brands that are investing to build a presence. The massive popularity of on-line video game streaming has spawned big money investment and game developers into organizing Professional Leagues with Franchise teams in the most popular games, such as League of Legends and Overwatch. Indeed, mainstay sports such as NFL and NBA are replicated in this new online world and major franchise owners are leveraging their positions with eSport teams. Formula 1 racing is also now online and RedBull has duplicated their efforts and extended their brand deep into both worlds. Truth be told watching F1 virtual racing and F1 live event broadcast is almost undistinguishable.
For these performers, participants and viewers, entertainment has been reinvented and now this movement threatens to take down traditional professional stadium sports as their audiences continue to drop dramatically and revenues are threatened. And importantly On-line gaming is free from all the inherent risks of pro sports… NFL players have an average career of 3 years and have a life expectancy of 58. F1 has massive investments in vehicles and drivers that hit top speeds approaching 400KMH; and many crash and die. Some say the risk is what makes it exciting as a spectator sport – but what if there could be no live spectators?
In this unfortunate circumstance of State of Emergency Lockdowns resulting from the COVID – 19 pandemic, around the globe, professional sports has completely shut down. Ironically, as the entire world stays home, the online streaming and professional eSport arena has flourished and is building upon its already massive success. This new online streaming world indeed is becoming mainstream with a broadening audience appeal and expanding demographic. As countries put in place lockdowns to combat the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, people turned to video games in droves, pushing digital revenue to $10 billion and making March 2020 the best month ever for digital spending, according to Nielsen's SuperData.