Is Esport to be as successful as traditional sports?

Esports has been drawing people’s attention and many tech tycoons have put lots of efforts into Esports. The famous game developer, Activision Blizzard, hired people from the traditional sports (including the famous NBA) to lead its new esports; it wants to borrow the success story to help its esports events to be similarly successful. Tencent also has invested billions of dollars into esports, is hosting the world largest PC game (League of Legends) competition and the world largest mobilegame (Honor of King) competition. Alibaba is hosting WESG every year after Samsung ended its WSG event. Recently Google unveiled its gaming platform, Stadia. When Google introduced its new platform, it seemed that the new platform would help game developing and live streaming. While many companies are investing in esports, can Esports be as successful as traditional sports?

Esports can have as many fans as traditional sports does, so there is definitely a market over there. However, there are some key differences between Esports and Sports. Traditional sports does not have copyright, that any party can host a sports event. However, traditional sports need facilities to host the events, like a stadium. On the other hand, esports normally needs the authorisation from game developers. This can be costly, that is why we often see game developers are also the hosters of their game events. In addition, more and more video games are released every year. After a video game becomes popular, more similar video games will be released. But esports events do not necessarily need a stadium to host, there is a plenty of online esports competitions. Moreover, to some extent, people can watch esports competitions better from their own computer screens rather than from a huge monitor when sitting in a stadium. Moreover, many live streaming platform has provided ways of communication between audience across the Internet.

To conclude, I personally expect esports can growing more popular, but there is not a single video game which can have a dominating power as Football has.