Problem: Sports have brought humans together since the beginning of time. From watching highschool basketball games to watching the country’s best athlete win gold at the olympics, sports have always given people a thrill, positive emotions, and an excuse to meet up with others. A new type of sport has emerged, which caters to a different community: Esports.
Esports is short for electronic sports, defined as any competition using video games. Gaming has been a popular hobby in the past, but now gaming can be taken to the next level with serious competition through esports. Like actual sports, esports gives people the same thrill and fun, just through a different medium.
However, one big difference between esports and sports is the accessibility for fans to watch games, keep up with their favorite teams, and to keep up with important information regarding those. For actual sports, there are numerous websites and apps, ESPN being the most popular, for people to keep up with scores, trades, and any other important pieces of information. For esports, there is no mainstream platform or website for people to keep up with esports. Most companies or games have their own streaming services, but this can be a hassle to keep looking at different things at once. I personally have seen many people I know that are interested in esports struggle with keeping track of statlines and scores. Their only way is by watching the games on streaming services like Twitch, which is not always possible for someone with a busy schedule.
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Solution: The esports community has a lot of people that are immersed in the culture but they still do not have the mainstream platform, which they need. The solution is a platform that can provide these services to the community. This platform will provide the important statlines, important pieces of information, teams, games, upcoming tournaments and competitions, and much more. Ideally, this platform will be linked to existing streaming services like twitch, so the community can also get better deals to watch these esports competitions. This platform should be like an ESPN for esports.
The market size for this industry has been valued at 1.39 billion in 2022, according to Yahoo Finance. Obviously, esports is a large market. According to Demand Sage, there are approximately 532.1 million esports viewers in 2022, and that number is projected to increase to 640.8 million in 2025. The market for viewing esports is growing at a rapid rate, showing that there is indeed a demand for this type of platform.
Competitor: Many websites exist like https://esportsinsider.com/ but they mostly give only sports news like the latest scandals, trades, or just news of a new release or an upcoming competition. The new platform I went over will provide more services instead of just news.
Monetization:
Possible partnership with other streaming services
Subscription based usage
One time fee like buying an app
Esports betting
Contributed by: Shubaan Sridhar (Billion Dollar Startup Ideas)