The gaming landscape revolves and evolves around us

While the pandemic has expedited the mass adoption of gaming, easy access and low barriers to entry also play a big part in the growth of the global gaming population. With the affordability of high performance mobile devices and broadband networks, mobile is estimated to account for more than half of the global industry’s earnings in 2021. And as our lifestyles gradually shift out of lockdown, we anticipate that the mobile gaming segment will continue to experience high playership along with consumer spend. Further advancing the portability of gaming are technologies such as 5G and the gradual roll out of cloud gaming, bringing AAA titles to mobile devices. Even segments such as streaming and esports have started to go mobile, enabling gamers to play, watch and compete from anywhere in the world.      

*Tencent 2020, NewZoo 2020

We expect to see that all forms of mobile and portable gaming will continue to see sustained payership as populations start returning to work. During the lockdown, time spent online increased by almost 30% when compared to the pre-lockdown period. After the lockdown ended in some regions, consumers continued to spend time online. This is a 13% increase before the lockdown.* It is expected that most of the additional gain in engagements (in gaming, esports, and streaming) arising from this period will stick after the pandemic, and hybrid events will become more common.**   

* Inmobi Southeast Asia Mobile Marketing Handbook 2021  

** Tencent, Esports market outlook for South East Asia 2021                

Esports (particularly within APAC) is not only becoming mainstream, it’s also fast becoming its own industry segment. In recent years, we’ve seen that esports has been gaining recognition as a legitimate sport, not only in terms of popularity and audience growth, but also increasingly larger leagues, tournaments, prize pools and appearance on mainstream broadcasting. We’ve seen, from many of our industry partners and regional teams, that the esports audience in APAC (42.5 million) stand out from those in other regions, they carry with them a strong sense of national pride and support for local teams.

This has set the precedence for an entire segment of industry dedicated to the production, organising, merchandising and promotion of the sport. And inspiring audiences to not only play more, watch more, but also demand more, calling for better content, more diverse representation and richer experiences. With more than half of the world’s gaming population in Asia, the opportunity for brands is too big to ignore. Non-endemic (or non-gaming) brands see sponsorship as a way to get in on the action, but need to negotiate with game publishers and league organisers for opportunities to be more integrated and collaborative. To create offerings that are not only relevant to the sport but also meaningful to the audience.     

*Tencent 2020, NewZoo 2020, ONEEsports

Today, much of the industry has leaned into content as the next biggest entertainment opportunity within the esports space (aside from the actual competition). Many sponsors already see this as the chance to incorporate their brand into the event viewership (think superbowl halftime, but for esports), and are demanding that it be part of their sponsorship entitlements. In the next year, we anticipate that live events will start to rolling back into view as league organisers gradually work around the new norm, making experiential the next brand opportunity in esports. Following this, we see that the future of esports will not only have more points of experiences, but will also have greater variety (and more diverse audiences) as publishers (such as supercell and Nintendo) are starting to bring their titles into the competitive space.                                

APAC not only has the biggest gaming population, but also the most diverse compared to other regions, with an average of 40% of gamers across the region being female (as high as 50% in some markets), we expect that this gap will only get narrower with the rise of GenZ and Alpha. Diversity of the gaming audience does not stop at gender, the industry is striving to make gaming and esports accessible to people of all genders, races, religions and social standing.   

*Dentsu Connected Consumer Survey 2020, Tencent 2020, NewZoo 2020

As the acceptance of diversity in gaming and esports across the region, comes diversity in the industry. Already, not only are we seeing growth in esports female teams across the region, but also teams and players from rural communities making it to the national and even regional stage. And with the mainstream acceptance of gaming, comes educational programs, talent and local industry.           

Author:
Robin Lau

Senior Strategist, dentsu solutions APAC