Esports Industry to Reach $6 Billion by 2030, Faces New Challenges

The esports industry is set to become a $6 billion market by 2030, although it is not without its challenges, according to a recent report by GlobalData. In 2023, the industry was valued at $3 billion, and it is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 19% over the next decade. This significant growth can be attributed to the increasing global audience, which is forecasted to reach 641 million by 2025, as reported by Newzoo. Such growth has attracted the attention of major brands like Coca-Cola and BMW, who have already started sponsoring teams and events.

However, as the esports industry matures, it will face new hurdles. For instance, it needs to diversify its audience and demonstrate its ability to provide a return on investment. Additionally, it must establish a clear pathway for amateur gamers to transition into professional athletes. These challenges are part of the industry’s quest for continued expansion and recognition.

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GlobalData defines esports as organized multiplayer video game competitions with specific rules for teams and players. A study by Nielsen’s Esports Fan Insights revealed that the average age of an esports fan is 25, with over three-quarters being male. Interestingly, there is an increasing percentage of female fans among the newest generation of esports enthusiasts.

The monetization models within the esports industry are constantly evolving. Teams and players are exploring avenues such as physical merchandise, loyalty programs, and exclusive content to generate additional revenue streams. Furthermore, esports companies are now being listed on stock exchanges. Reselling broadcasting rights and co-streaming are also emerging trends indicative of the industry’s maturation.

While the esports industry faces challenges, its growth potential remains promising. As it continues to captivate a global audience and garner interest from major brands, the industry is paving the way for the future of competitive gaming.

์ „์‚ฌ ์‚ฐ์—…์€ 2030๋…„๊นŒ์ง€ 600์–ต ๋‹ฌ๋Ÿฌ ์‹œ์žฅ์ด ๋  ์ „๋ง์ด์ง€๋งŒ, ์ตœ๊ทผ GlobalData์˜ ๋ณด๊ณ ์„œ์— ๋”ฐ๋ฅด๋ฉด ๋„์ „ ๊ณผ์ œ๋„ ๋งŽ๋‹ค๊ณ ํ•ฉ๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. 2023๋…„์—๋Š” ์‚ฐ์—… ๊ฐ€์น˜๊ฐ€ 30์–ต ๋‹ฌ๋Ÿฌ๋กœ ํ‰๊ฐ€๋˜์—ˆ์œผ๋ฉฐ, ์•ž์œผ๋กœ 10๋…„๊ฐ„ ๋ณตํ•ฉ ์—ฐํ‰๊ท  ์„ฑ์žฅ๋ฅ  19%๋กœ ์„ฑ์žฅํ•  ์ „๋ง์ž…๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ์ด๋Ÿฌํ•œ ํฐ ์„ฑ์žฅ์€ Newzoo์— ๋”ฐ๋ฅด๋ฉด 2025๋…„๊นŒ์ง€ 6์–ต 4100๋งŒ ๋ช…์— ์ด๋ฅด๋Š” ์˜ˆ์ƒ ๊ธ€๋กœ๋ฒŒ ์ฒญ์ค‘์„ ์œ ์น˜ํ•˜๊ณ  ์žˆ๋‹ค๋Š” ์ ์— ๊ธฐ์ธํ•ฉ๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ์ด๋Ÿฌํ•œ ์„ฑ์žฅ์œผ๋กœ ์ฝ”์นด์ฝœ๋ผ์™€ BMW์™€ ๊ฐ™์€ ์ฃผ์š” ๋ธŒ๋žœ๋“œ์˜ ์ฃผ๋ชฉ์„ ๋Œ์–ด, ์ด๋ฏธ ํŒ€๊ณผ ์ด๋ฒคํŠธ๋ฅผ ํ›„์›ํ•˜๊ธฐ ์‹œ์ž‘ํ–ˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค.

๊ทธ๋Ÿฌ๋‚˜ ์ „์‚ฌ ์‚ฐ์—…์ด ์„ฑ์ˆ™ํ•ด์ง์— ๋”ฐ๋ผ ์ƒˆ๋กœ์šด ๋ฌธ์ œ์— ์ง๋ฉดํ•˜๊ฒŒ ๋  ๊ฒƒ์ž…๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ์˜ˆ๋ฅผ ๋“ค์–ด, ์ฒญ์ค‘ ๋‹ค์–‘์„ฑ์„ ํ™•๋Œ€ํ•˜๊ณ  ํˆฌ์ž ์ˆ˜์ต์„ ์ œ๊ณตํ•  ์ˆ˜ ์žˆ๋Š” ๋Šฅ๋ ฅ์„ ์ž…์ฆํ•ด์•ผ ํ•ฉ๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ๋˜ํ•œ, ์•„๋งˆ์ถ”์–ด ๊ฒŒ์ž„๋Ÿฌ๊ฐ€ ํ”„๋กœ ์„ ์ˆ˜๋กœ ์ „ํ–ฅํ•  ์ˆ˜ ์žˆ๋Š” ๋ช…ํ™•ํ•œ ๊ฒฝ๋กœ๋ฅผ ๋งˆ๋ จํ•ด์•ผ ํ•ฉ๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ์ด๋Ÿฌํ•œ ๋„์ „์€ ์‚ฐ์—…์ด ๊ณ„์†ํ•ด์„œ ์„ฑ์žฅํ•˜๊ณ  ์ธ์ •๋ฐ›๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•œ ๋…ธ๋ ฅ์˜ ์ผํ™˜์ž…๋‹ˆ๋‹ค.

GlobalData๋Š” ์ „์ž ๊ฒฝ๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ํŠน์ • ๊ทœ์น™๊ณผ ํ”Œ๋ ˆ์ด์–ด๋ฅผ ์œ„ํ•œ ํŒ€์ด ์žˆ๋Š” ๋Œ€๊ทœ๋ชจ ๋ฉ€ํ‹ฐํ”Œ๋ ˆ์ด์–ด ๋น„๋””์˜ค ๊ฒŒ์ž„ ๋Œ€ํšŒ๋กœ ์ •์˜ํ•ฉ๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. Nielsen์˜ Esports Fan Insights์˜ ์—ฐ๊ตฌ์— ๋”ฐ๋ฅด๋ฉด, ์ „์ž ๊ฒฝ๊ธฐ ํŒฌ์˜ ํ‰๊ท  ์—ฐ๋ น์€ 25์„ธ์ด๋ฉฐ, ๊ทธ ์ค‘ 75%๊ฐ€ ๋‚จ์„ฑ์ž…๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ํฅ๋ฏธ๋กœ์šด ์ ์€ ์ตœ์‹  ์„ธ๋Œ€์˜ ์ „์ž ๊ฒฝ๊ธฐ ์• ํ˜ธ๊ฐ€ ์ค‘ ์—ฌ์„ฑ ํŒฌ์˜ ๋น„์œจ์ด ์ฆ๊ฐ€ํ•˜๊ณ  ์žˆ๋‹ค๋Š” ์ ์ž…๋‹ˆ๋‹ค.

์ „์‚ฌ ์‚ฐ์—…์—์„œ์˜ ์ˆ˜์ต ๋ชจ๋ธ์€ ์ง€์†์ ์œผ๋กœ ๋ณ€ํ™”ํ•˜๊ณ  ์žˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ํŒ€๊ณผ ํ”Œ๋ ˆ์ด์–ด๋Š” ๋ฌผ๋ฆฌ์ ์ธ ์ƒํ’ˆ, ์ถฉ์„ฑ๋„ ํ”„๋กœ๊ทธ๋žจ, ๋…์  ์ฝ˜ํ…์ธ  ๋“ฑ์˜ ๋ฐฉ์•ˆ์„ ํƒ๊ตฌํ•˜์—ฌ ์ถ”๊ฐ€์ ์ธ ์ˆ˜์ต์›์„ ์ฐฝ์ถœํ•˜๊ณ  ์žˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ๋˜ํ•œ, ์ „์‚ฌ ํšŒ์‚ฌ๋“ค์ด ์ฃผ์‹ ๊ฑฐ๋ž˜์†Œ์— ์ƒ์žฅ๋˜๊ณ  ์žˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ๋ฐฉ์†ก ๊ถŒ๋ฆฌ ์žฌํŒ๋งค์™€ ๋™์‹œ ์ค‘๊ณ„๋„ ์‚ฐ์—… ์„ฑ์ˆ™์˜ ํ‘œ์‹œ๋กœ ๋ถ€์ƒํ•˜๊ณ  ์žˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค.

์ „์‚ฌ ์‚ฐ์—…์€ ๋„์ „์— ์ง๋ฉดํ•˜๊ณ  ์žˆ์ง€๋งŒ, ์„ฑ์žฅ ์ž ์žฌ๋ ฅ์€ ์—ฌ์ „ํžˆ ์œ ๋งํ•ฉ๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ๊ธ€๋กœ๋ฒŒ ์ฒญ์ค‘์„ ๋งค๋ฃŒ์‹œํ‚ค๊ณ  ์ฃผ์š” ๋ธŒ๋žœ๋“œ์˜ ๊ด€์‹ฌ์„ ๋ฐ›์œผ๋ฉฐ, ์‚ฐ์—…์€ ๊ฒฝ์Ÿ์ ์ธ ๊ฒŒ์ž„์˜ ๋ฏธ๋ž˜๋ฅผ ๊ฐœ์ฒ™ํ•˜๊ณ  ์žˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค.

ByMariusz Lewandowski

Mariusz Lewandowski is a dedicated writer and thought leader specializing in new technologies and fintech. He holds a degree in Computer Science from the renowned University of California, Berkeley, where he developed a strong foundation in data analysis and software development. With over a decade of professional experience, Mariusz has contributed his insights to various tech publications and industry journals. His expertise is further enhanced by his tenure at FinServ Innovations, where he played a pivotal role in exploring innovative financial solutions and digital transformation strategies. Mariusz is passionate about bridging the gap between technology and finance, and he aims to empower readers with valuable knowledge in this rapidly evolving landscape.