Just as many people watch esports in the US as ice hockey

A new report on esports entitled Why Sports & Brands Want to be in Esports has just been released by Newzoo and compares fans of esports with those of American sports.

Various interesting statistics came out of the report. For example, among males between the ages of 21 and 25 in the US, esports is just as popular as ice hockey or baseball, with 22% viewing it. 76% of esports enthusiasts in general also say that their viewership of esports is taking away hours they used to dedicate to sports.

The report also said that six million of the 20 million esports fans in the US do not watch basketball, ice hockey, baseball or American football at all, and of the 80 million basketball fans in the US, 9.6 million are also fans of esports. This means that basketball clubs have the potential to draw in 10.3 million new esports fans currently not into basketball, like the Philadelphia 76ers have done by acquiring two teams.

The report made it clear that esports is now a global spectator sport, highlighting that streaming services like Twitch have over 100 million unique viewers each month and esports events draw up to 100,000 visitors in a weekend. Revenues in esports is valued at $0.5 billion US dollars as well, so if revenues per fan were similar to the NBA, it would be worth five times that.

You can check out the full report here. What do you make of these statistics? Are you a fan of esports?