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Research outfit NewZoo has released its latest reports, focusing on esports viewers and their habits in ten focal Western countries.
The headline statistic is that, in the last three months 42% of League of Legends, Dota 2, or CS:GO viewers do not play the game they’re watching. 26% of League of Legends’ fans and 30% of CS:GO’s fans are viewers only and do not play the game and 70% of fans exclusively watch one of the big three esports titles.
Newzoo’s senior market analyst, Jurre Pannekeet, said in a statement: “It’s not surprising that 42% of League of Legends, Dota 2, or CS:GO viewers haven’t played one of these games in the past three months.
“League of Legends, Dota 2, and CS:GO each have a large gaming community and following, so a lot of these viewers/gamers have played these titles at some point. For game publishers, esports has been a great way to keep lapsed players engaged and interested in their games. Gamers change the games that they play more quickly than the games that they watch, so esports provides a great opportunity to still enjoy a game one used to play in the past but in a more laidback way.”
“For advertisers, it is key to understand what titles are popular and how popularity differs per region or country. There is no game that speaks to the entire esports community. Knowing how to reach your target audience through the right titles and addressing each title’s community effectively makes the difference between a failed or successful campaign.”
These countries examined were: the U.S., Canada, Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, and Sweden. Analysis focussed only on ‘Tier 1’ esports titles League of Legends, Dota 2 or CS:GO.
Bear in mind, these are only NewZoo’s reports, and while they’re often fairly reliable, they can only look at the last three months or so of data, so there could potentially be outliers that they’ve not taken into account.
