It's all in the numbers, and the figures continue to look good for the esports industry, year-on-year.
A complex new campus
There's a point where you make it big enough in esports to warrant a fancy new campus, and that's what Complexity Gaming has unveiled in partnership with Dallas Cowboys. The GameStop Performance Center — seating 11,000 — will play host to Complexity, and the teams will even be able to eat the same food as the Cowboys.
This move, as reported by Dot Esports, is part of Complexity Gaming's plan to make professional gamers become recognized the same as traditional athletes. This new center will house various facilities for visitors to engage with, including a LAN area with PCs and other devices ready for gaming. It's a serious amount of funds being invested in the facilities backing Complexity teams.
Up, up, and up!
Esports viewership figures continue to rise as The Esports Observer highlighted some interesting numbers this week. The "top four" esports games, including League of Legends, CS:GO, DOTA2, and more recently Fortnite continue to rake in the big bucks, increasing production value, prize pools, and tournament scope.
According to published figures, it's not just the big four games that are experiencing an increase in viewership. In fact, Call of Duty, FIFA, and World of Warcraft are seeing a surge in popularity. Notably, some titles such as Apex Legends have missed the boat with EA and Respawn being held accountable for the lack of esports additional support.
Looking at how the top games are progressing through 2019, compared to old data collected by The Esports Observer, it looks promising for all parties involved. The current outlook on esports growth shouldn't be taken for granted, however, as Kotaku's Cecilia D'Anastasio pointed out in a recent editorial on some of the shady parts of the industry.
This piece looks at some of the bubbles people within the scene fear will eventually bust. Revenues still lag far behind the overall cost of running the scene, be it for organizers with events or owners and their teams. It's difficult to make it big in esports and remain there while not continuing to require more investment.
There's plenty of money pouring into esports, but one has to wonder if the outgoings of teams and costs of running the show for organizers are ever going to be recouporated from sources that can be considered revenue streams. IT's clear all parties involved are attempting to branch out and bring in new sponsorship opportunities, shared revenue plans with leagues and other means, but there's still some way to go.
