Video gaming is big business. The global market is expected to reach $187.7 billion in 2024, according to data firm Newzoo.
And in the industry, there has been a big effort to boost esports, which is competitive gaming, and turn it into a professional sport on part with soccer or football.
Esports involves teams or individuals competing against each other in different video games. These players train and have coaches like regular athletes in a bid to be the best in their game category.
In August, the first ever Esports World Cup concluded. It featured more than 1,500 players and a prize pool of $60 million.
“We’re exactly hitting that nail of having mainstream coverage around this all over the world,” Ralf Reichert, CEO of the Esports World Cup, told CNBC’s Beyond the Valley podcast.
In this episode of Beyond the Valley, Tom Chitty and I are joined by Reichert to discuss the growth of esports and its future.
If you have any thoughts on this or previous episodes, please email us at beyondthevalley@cnbc.com.
You can subscribe to “Beyond the Valley” by clicking the links below to your chosen platform:
Here is a transcript of the “Beyond the Valley” episode released on August 21, 2024. It has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Tom Chitty
While Paris hosted the Olympic Games a few weeks ago, nearly 3,000 miles away, another sports tournament was taking place, not necessarily with the same prestige as the Olympics, but certainly with a bigger prize pool. The winners sharing more than $60 million. This weekend brings the conclusion of the first Esports World Cup, which has been taking place in Riyadh for the last eight weeks, featuring 23 events in 22 different video game titles, including Call of Duty and Fortnight, the event was part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, a government program to diversify the country’s economy away from its reliance on oil. But for the gaming community, uniting the industry under one competitive umbrella could, in the words of our special guest this week, bring this to a scale similar to the largest traditional sports events around the world. Let’s introduce our special guest. He couldn’t be better placed to tackle the subject for this week’s episode. Firstly, he grew up an avid gamer before co-founding one of the first esports teams. He then went on to co-found Electronic Sports League Gaming, a German esports organizer and production company that produces video game competitions worldwide. It’s the oldest esports company that is still operational. Finally, and most importantly, for the subject for this week’s podcast, he’s the Esports World Cup CEO. Ralf Reichert, welcome to Beyond the Valley.
Ralf Reichart
Thanks for having me.
Tom Chitty
Give us a backstory about how the professional esports gaming came to be. And it’s always kind of, as you’ve suggested, been a niche kind of thing. But how far down the road are you to make it more mainstream?
Ralf Reichart
In the late 90s this became a…
Read More: How esports is taking off with big dollars behind it