Tencent taking it to next level

There are currently 191 million e-sports fans around the world, and that number is projected to increase by 20 percent by 2020, according to video game specialists Newzoo.

A huge fan base is fueling growth in China, with digital giant Tencent leading the way.

“Tencent e-sports contains about six brand games, such as MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena games), FPS (first-person shooter), and seven other core occupation games such as LPL, KPL, CFPL, which form a sound basis for e-sports tournaments with over 170 million users,” said Mars Hou, vice-general manager of marketing for Tencent Interactive Entertainment.

“Look at LPL (the top-level professional league for League of Legends) on China’s mainland. Its viewership in 2016 was over 5 billion, the total timescale reached 840 million hours and independent viewers of the finals numbered over 43 million.

“For the first half of 2017, viewer numbers for mobile e-sports have exceeded 2.7 billion.”

Sage Huang, general manager of the League of Legends product department, agreed.

“As the world’s largest e-sports project, League of Legends, from its birth, has been promoting the development of global e-sports, and has achieved very good results in recent years,” Sage said.

“In last year’s League of Legends world finals, more than 390 million unique viewers worldwide watched the event.”

Numbers for this year’s grand final in Beijing last weekend are still being collated.