With COVID-19 halting most normal daily life activities, it has also put sporting events on hold. That is regular sporting events, like baseball and basketball games but it hasn’t been able to stop the growth of Esports, if anything it has helped Esports gain popularity.
The revenue from Esports was over $1 billion in 2019 and only projected by Newzoo to reach over $1.5 billion by 2021. This type of sport has already made a name for itself in the professional sporting world, but it’s beginning to transition into colleges. A recent analysis done by Grand Canyon University looked at the college Esport scene across the country and how it’s growing.
Grand Canyon University says that despite the fact that there are over 400 Esport programs in the U.S. competing on the intercollegiate level, there are still states that have yet to completely get on board with the sport. There are four states that account for over 25% of the nation’s teams. Those states are California, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York.
To give you a better understanding of the growth of college Esports, take a look at these numbers. There was only a 4.27% growth of teams in 2015 and in 2019 there was a 37.69% growth. That is over a 30% increase in just a few years. Schools that make up the highest percentage of collegiate Esports programs are members of the NCAA. Most of the schools fall into either division I or Division II classifications.
You might be thinking that Esports games are only your actual “sports” games, but the most popular game is League of Legends, with almost 90% of schools having a varsity team playing it.
Esports are only predicted to get more popular. It will be interesting to watch the growth of a sport that didn’t have a major impact from the global pandemic. It’s looking like Esports have found their place in the world and they are here to stay.