India’s e-sports sector is about to boom, an opportune time for the marketers

The Indian e-sports industry, with the inrush of sponsorships, is likely to see an elevation in its revenues in the coming years.

According to a recent report by Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), the Indian e-sports sector has increased at 36.8 CAGR.  Brands like Oppo, Yes Bank and Sony Liv have recently joined the global e-sports industry which has crossed the $billion milestone.

It isn’t until recently that non-endemic brands like Flipkart, Sony, Mercedes and Yes Bank have started to show interest and sponsored large scale tournaments along with the endemic brands like Asus, Acer and Vivo. Mujahid Rupani, Co-founder and CEO of Cobx Gaming, opines that ‘with the e-sports industry growing rigorously, brands will see an array of marketing opportunities for themselves’.

According to the KPMR report of 2018, there are more than 250 million online gamers in India. Rupani added that considering the huge audience the e-sports industry caters to, for advertisers, this is a huge opportunity to reach their audience.

The Indian e-sports sector ranks 16^th globally and is currently at a budding stage. In recent times, the industry has had increased number of gamers and followers, thus increasing the probability of getting ranked ahead in the next few years.

“The target growth of this industry is young and highly engaged. Brands have to strategically execute their marketing plans to successfully reach their audience. Brands like Vodafone, Mercedes, Intel and Vivo have been sponsoring e-sports tournaments like ESL One 2019 and Pubg Mobile India Series”, Rupani added.

When asked about the revenue model of the industry, Rupani highlighted two aspects of the industry- e sports tournament and e-sports team. Sponsorship is the major source of revenue in the e-sports industry followed by profit sharing, event ticketing, media partnership, streaming ads and stream ticketing. He added that the industry is looking forward to open broadcasting rights as another revenue model in e-sports in the future.