Building Fanbases: Do Esports Fans Only Care About Winning?
Gaming has always been a hobby that has brought the competitive side out of people. Five minutes in your standard Xbox Live Chat will tell you how much your average gamer cares about the titles they play. Now throw that competitive instinct alongside a match that is potentially worth thousands of dollars, and you begin to see why those involved in the world of Esports are made or broken by their results in the server. In our latest post here at God Is A Geek, we’re going to be putting Esports fanbases under the microscope, analysing why professional organisations prioritise winning so much.
What Is Esports?
Video games have grown from the coin-pushing arcade classics and low-res polygon titles of most of our childhoods. Now valued to be worth more than the film and music industries put together, the video game world is reportedly worth $347 billion, with the mobile gaming market worth $248 billion of that figure.
Esports has at times been a benefactor and at times a driver of this growth, but it remains one of the fastest-growing parts of the wider gaming industry. ‘Esports’ is an umbrella term used to describe the industries that have sprung up in support of various games’ competitive communities. Games like League of Legends, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2 and Fortnite all boast competitive circuits that see teams of full-time professional players jetting off to all four corners of the globe to take part in tournaments that often come with prize pools in the millions of dollars.
These tournaments are watched by hundreds of thousands of fans both in-person and online betting on these tournaments has even mirrored sports like football, basketball or tennis in terms of popularity. For those interested in Esports betting in Canada, bookmakers like Unikrn house the best range of odds for games across the industry.
Teams have sponsors and partners that help fund their exploits, but maintaining these lucrative relationships is almost always entirely dependent on results. Unlike real-world sports where the marketing potential of a team’s superstars can cover up sloppy performance on the court or pitch, Esports is a true results-based business.
Results Over Anything
When it comes to securing the sponsorships needed to keep a professional Esports org afloat, a team needs a solid and dependable fanbase. For the most part, Esports orgs field professional teams in a number of different games, each of which holds their own distinct communities and fanbases to try and stay in touch with.
During the Esports industry’s formative years, orgs were presented with the question: ‘How do you make your brand appeal to fans?’
For some, the answer was to focus all their efforts on driving results in the server and securing as many bits of silverware as they could, whilst others focused on recruiting various content creators to promote their brands via streaming rather than emphasising competitive performance. Now a decade on, it looks as though there’s a convergence towards the former of these across the industry.
Owners such as Jack Etienne from org Cloud9 and Steve Arhancet from Team Liquid recently caused quite a stir in the competitive League of Legends by reiterating that their teams were ‘not entertainers’. This quote came on the back of criticism from streamer-turned-team owner Jeremy Wang aka. ‘Disguised Toast’. Disguised Toast claimed that a lack of attention on content creation and constant roster reshuffling was leading to fans feeling less connected and invested in the teams and regions they supported.
Owners like Etienne and Arhancet refute this however by claiming that they remain dedicated to finding the best competitive teams without ever compromising their chances of winning in the server. No Esport organisation has ever publicly said they don’t recognise the entertainment aspect of the industry, but it is clear that they see winning tournaments as the best way of keeping fans engaged.
Cloud9 and Team Liquid are two of the most recognisable brands in the Esports industry, and their ruthlessness in games like League of Legends has certainly had the desired effect so far. Both teams compete in the LCS region in the game, the top-level professional league for Canada and the United States in the game. Cloud9 has won four of the past six LCS titles, whilst Liquid won four on the bounce prior to this success.
Where do you stand on what the priority should be for Esport team owners? Is there anything better for building a loyal fanbase than the thrill of winning? Or is there still a place for streamers and content creators to hoover support through more intimate means?
