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Oct. 22 (NBD) – The next decade will be a "golden age" for the culture and entertainment industry represented by esports, Ying Shuling, chairman and CEO of esports and pan-entertainment firm VSPN, said at a recent forum on cultural creativity and innovation in Shanghai. 

Esports, an emerging industry integrating entertainment, games, and sports, is gaining a foothold in China and is likely to outpace traditional sports events such as football and basketball in popularity.

In 2003, esports was listed as an official sport by the General Administration of Sport of China. This year's Jakarta Palembang 2018 Asian Games witnessed the debut of esports as a demonstration event and China won two gold medals and one silver medal in the program.

Esports completed evolvement in less than 20 years that took the traditional sports industry a century long to accomplish.

According to Gamma Data, the esports industry reached 77 billion yuan (11.1 billion U.S. dollars) in 2017 and is expected to surpass 88 billion yuan (12.7 billion U.S. dollars) in 2018. In the past three years, the increase rate of esports audience was kept at more than 20 percent. The total number of esports viewers is expected to hit 430 million this year. 

In 2017, League of Legends Pro League (LPL) was watched over 10 billion times, with the single-day views topping 140 million at its peak. In the first half of 2018, LPL enjoyed around 7.1 billion views. Another event King Pro League (KPL) notched a whopping 10.3 billion views only from March to December last year, outperforming many traditional sports events in China.

The promising market has attracted massive capital inflows. 

Tencent (OTCMKTS: TCEHY) and NetEase (NASDAQ: NTES) have taken the lead in investing in the sector. Online retailers Suning (002024.SZ) and JD.com (NASDAQ: JD) as well as video platform Bilibili (NASDAQ: BILI) have provided financial support to esports clubs. Silver-spoon kids with Wang Sicong and Fok Kai-kong as representatives are also eyeing the industry.

Despite the promising prospect, Ying Shuling said to Yicai China's esports industry still lacks diversity in contents and faces the issue of uneven content quality. The foremost thing at present is to increase content quality, improve viewing experience, and enrich contents through the combination of films and TVs. 

Gu Liming, General Manager and Senior Vice President of Perfect World Games (NASDAQ: PWRD) stated that compared with the traditional entertainment sector, it is easier for the esports industry to generate globalized intellectual property (IP) products.

The practices of Perfect World Games and VSPN show esports firms are performing well in developing esports IP products in multiple industries beyond gaming.

In Ying's opinion, the future of the industry is deemed to be promising. Ying predicted esports will become the most popular sports event with its influence outweighing that of football in the years to come.

 

Email: wenqiao@nbd.com.cn

Editor: Wen Qiao