The pause button that COVID-19 has put on our sport, entertainment and leisure liberties and privileges has forced us all to look at alternative ways of pursuing that instinctive human desire called happiness.  It is a desire fuelled by the mammal need for sense of belonging and to be being connected with others.  It is a disruption the world has not seen at this scale was since the World War II.  Then, the FIFA World Cup was cancelled for 12 years and so were the 1940 and 1944 Olympics Games.  One hopes it will not that long (12 years) for us to get back to normal.  However, we must acknowledge that its take us years not months for us to get back to where we were pre-COVID times, much has been lost already.  When we do return, it will be a “new normal”, the world will be a different place, we are starting to adapt to the “new normal” already.

During these COVID times we have had find ways to satiate our human pursuit for happiness and new behaviours are beginning to emerge, many of which will remain post the COVID strife.  One of the biggest winners has been gaming and the eSports industry, more people are spending more time on their devices. Traditional sports are moving into digital and eSport platforms. A recent report by Captify shows that with mass live sports events cancellations, consumers are looking for their sports fix elsewhere. Consumer interest for sports games has seen a 1054% search uplift since January 2020, with the top indexing audience being sports fans who see games and gaming as an alternative.  

With gaming and e-sports on an exponential rise, most rights owners are exploring opportunities to secure front row seats in e-sports.  The Virtual Bundesliga, has led the way for football leagues around the world in this regard.  In partnership with the German Football League and EA Sports they created the platform as another way through which the League can engage with fans, attract new and younger audiences. By November 2019 it already had about 130 000 participants, and multi-territory participation with live broadcasts.  This massive shift has continued, as in March 2020, Formula 1 took to Twitch to host the Bahrain Grand Prix alongside a UK tournament host, Gfinity. This spurred an alliance between virtual and real sport as drivers took to simulated racing on Twitch, with many of the drivers streaming the race in their own capacity, separate to the Grand Prix series.

In cycling, for the first time since World War II the Tour De France (TDF) didn’t happen this July.  Instead, virtual racing via a mass multiplayer online (MMO) platform filled the void felt by cyclists around the world, both professional and avid fans.  The virtual TDF was run by Zwift, the biggest player in the growing online racing world with 23 of the top men’s teams, and 17 top women’s teams participating in the virtual TDF. Included were at least three previous TDF winners: Chris Froome, Geraint Thomas, and Egan Bernal. The Women’s side boasted World Road Champion Marianne Vos, and Olympic Champion Anna van der Breggen.  Here in South Africa the cancellation of the 2020 Comrades (another first since the WW II) and Cape Town Marathon events spurred the launch of Virtual Running Platforms in a scale we have never seen in this country.  Runners like to run and compete against themselves, improve their times, and go faster, farther, and stronger. 

Virtual Running Platforms (VRP) and eSports platforms like the Virtual Bundesliga provide expanded opportunities for rights owners and sponsors alike.  For rights owners, they offer new revenue sources and a new participant base.  For sponsors, it provides an opportunity to engage with the a “new” and growing community throughout the year rather than just around the time of the event and has data mining and feedback to enable one to develop targeted messaging.  

It is not all that rosy though, one needs trade with cautious optimism.  There are still huge factors that lower the ceiling for growth in South Africa and globally.  In the South African case, infrastructure growth inhibits uptake by a significant number of would be gamers.  Access to the internet and high-end devices is a challenge for most. Data costs and connectivity means that proper gaming is still only accessible to only a few.  Furthermore, South Africa is, as far as serious gamers are concerned, essentially “cut-off” from the rest of the world, as connections to competitive game servers in other regions have high latency – not adequate to compete, which is a massive disadvantage. Due to the bandwidth requirement for serious or pro- gaming (tied to downloads/streaming), many gamers experience poor latency due to fair-use-policies.  

This coupled with the fact that, as my WPP Sports Practice colleague Grant Paterson pointed out, unlike traditional sports  - which are either structured via a ‘decentralised’ model like Football, Golf, Tennis etc (where rights-owners own events and not the ‘game’) or a ‘centralised’ model where there is a dominant ‘rights owner’ (NFL/NBA/MLB) at a professional level but amateur play can still flourish – esports is governed entirely by the publishers. All competitive play is ultimately controlled by the publisher of the game and they control who plays it where and when.  This creates a conflict of interest as publishers care much more about the IP and the overall health of their game rather than the health of the competitive leagues that play their games, which is the converse of professional sport.

As we look to unlock the potential that gaming has we need to take a glace at data from the 2020 NEWZOO Global Games report which shows that in an industry estimated at $159.3 billion, $77.2 billion comes from mobile games and thus smart phone account for huge percentage in device usage.  These figures point another important fact, that Grant Paterson made which is that, “the majority of gaming revenue comes from casual/amateur play, not the serious eSports/gaming.  This segment is a marketing tool to drive casual engagement/play, it’s the core business for publishers or Game owners”.  Whilst the above figures look very impressive the control publishers have in the industry has made some very sceptical about their accuracy, Nicole Pike, the manager of Nielsen Esports calls esports revenue “a big question mark, and we are grappling with the many unknowns of esports data, including revenue measurement. It can be really hard to know if an incremental dollar is going to the esports bottom line or the general gaming bottom line and what the origin of it was in the first place. My overall impression is that a lot that have put out data have erred on the side of being overly aggressive, putting things toward the esports side of things. There’s an overstatement.” Pike said to Kotaku.com last year.

With that said, the tailwinds for growth are there and driven by a democratisation of the industry and growing casual and professional play, new entrants will emerge.  With mobile phone penetration as it is South Africa and the African Continent the optimistic view is that it’s no brainer where the growth lies. Mobile gaming aided by increased (and fast) internet connectivity can really accelerate growth of the industry.  It will create new revenue and marketing opportunities for rights owner and commercial partners alike. Already we have seen that publishers like Valve (who own CounterStrike & Dota 2) are far less malevolent that Riot or Activision and are more interested in technology than IP protection.  The model will change with new entrants eager to take advantage of the “new normal” and create easily consumable products for less developed markets to satiate our new behavioural pursuits. As big brands start to push for a front seat in the gaming space, more opportunities will emerge and they will force for a wider and more innovative advertising environment, less controlled by publishers and more focused on the user journey. These factors will force more convergence between the material and virtual world, and henceforth unleash of the “new normal”.