Yes, you guessed it- cryptocurrency has started to take over the esports world and it seems to be everywhere (I call crypto blimps next; what even happened to those things…?). In a time where digitalisation has rapidly become synonymous with the current era, we find ourselves commandeering this invisible currency as a new way of making secure payments.
Large cryptocurrency platforms are looking to cash in on the lucrative gaming market by aligning themselves with large gaming organisations and franchises. We have already seen crypto start to dominate the sporting world, with Miami Heat gaining FTX as their new stadium partner, Watford FC adding Dogecoin to jerseys as a result of a partnership with Stake.com and Crpyto.com becoming the partner of VAR technology in the Serie A, as well
as partnering with PSG.
These three partnerships spread across the NBA, Premier League and Serie A represent a huge opportunity to capitalise on significant global viewing figures. Bear in mind that Premier League fans alone watch an average of 3.2 games per week, equating to over 270 minutes of football. VAR in Serie A was also used over 2,300 times with the league broadcasted in 775 million households across the globe.
An important aspect of these partnerships is ROI, as they often equate to multi-million-pound agreements between the partner and the league. The Stake.com partnership with Watford FC signalled the dawn of upcoming crypto agreements, whereby monetary payments are being replaced by cryptocurrency pay-outs.
Crypto in esports
But that’s enough about mainstream sport, as the exciting age of esports and gaming has started to gather momentum. It’s often difficult to imagine the sheer magnitude of esports audiences, so to put it into context, some games rival Olympic events for viewership figures. Streaming services have been known to pull in viewing audiences of over 250,000 concurrent viewers, whilst in-game events see audiences of over a million viewers across multiple streams.
This esports brand space has been mainly dominated by endemic and non-endemic brands from the likes of Mountain Dew (Gfuel), Mastercard, Red Bull, Chipotle, Domino’s and Intel.
But 2021 has flipped the sponsorship and advertising space on its head by looking towards crypto trading platforms and cryptocurrency as the main naming rights for a significant amount of esports events and organisations.
There are currently 9 esports organisations from the top 20 (based on highest overall team earnings) that have an affiliation with cryptocurrency. This is both through partnerships and the involvement with fan tokens on Socios.com (but more about fan tokens in a future post).
Team Solomid (TSM) have already ventured into an esports-crypto partnership, with a 10 year, $210m (£152.2m) deal with cryptocurrency trading platform FTX. The same can be said about gaming events, as FTX have also ventured into a partnership with League of Legends, appearing on the broadcast of the recent Championship Series (which reached up to 364k live viewers and 1.6m views overall on Twitch). The CS:GO ESL Pro League also saw a partnership with crypto trading platform Coinbase, drawing in 354k peak live viewers and averaging 114k viewers for each game. But why esports? The obvious answer is to appeal to the younger audiences that tune into esports and love gaming. There is something appealing to younger audiences about trading cryptocurrency- like a dialled down version of stocks that seems to avoid market trends, bullish behaviour and closing prices (in steps the influencer: “I MADE $12 MILLION ON THIS CRYPTO OVER NIGHT!”).
However, aligning crypto with esports presents the golden opportunity for gambling to capitalise on this new blend of markets. Betting on esports with cryptocurrency avoids the need for a centralised betting shop, as the target markets will be trading online.
Sony have already shown interest in patenting the idea of betting on live esports using cryptocurrency. Using gaming/esports as the vehicle for gambling makes perfect sense considering the huge streaming audiences, opportunities for in-game betting and access to younger audiences (proving a controversial topic when considering loot boxes and randomised in-game items).
"Gaming could pave the way for mainstream cryptocurrency usage."
Ubisoft, Sega, and GameSpot are also turning towards crypto in the hope that they will gain early access to the growing currency market. It’s a smart move for crypto trading platforms, as these larger game developers will have financial backing, reach significant audiences (through new game releases) and have the potential to feature partners on marketing activations.
What’s next?
As mentioned, gambling on esports with cryptocurrency will most likely be the next move, as larger game developers look to cash in on the ever-expanding market. From a streamer perspective, we could start to see popular streamers partnering with individual cryptocurrencies (similar to Watford FC partnering with Dogecoin).
This might look like in-stream placement (banners, adverts etc.), crypto giveaways, crypto channel subscriptions/donations or sponsored streams. There is potential for cryptocurrency to be the main currency for gaming transactions, before eventually finding its way into mainstream utilisation like in El Salvador.
It’s safe to say that with so many cryptocurrency trading platforms taking the esports world by storm, crypto is here to stay. This crossover promises to be an adventure- both exciting, yet scary (if you’re an investor that is).
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