Esports has become a glob­al phe­nom­e­non. Recent reports have val­ued the indus­try at more than $612 mil­lion, with reach extend­ing from Europe and North Amer­i­ca, and to the devel­op­ing mar­kets of Asia. It makes eSports an incred­i­bly pow­er­ful mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands. What are the best exam­ples of eSports mar­ket­ing, and do brands look­ing to ven­ture into eSports need to know?

The fifth install­ment of the Dota2 Inter­na­tion­al (or “TI5” as it is referred to with­in the Dota2 com­mu­ni­ty), which took place dur­ing the first week of August, was the largest and most pres­ti­gious eSports tour­na­ment to date.

Evil Genius­es’ win­nings of $6.6 mil­lion, from an over­all prize pool of $18.4 mil­lion, was the biggest prize win in pro­fes­sion­al eSports his­to­ry, putting all five mem­bers of EG’s Dota2 squad into the top six earn­ing eSports ath­letes in the world (LGD stal­wart xiao8 just takes the fifth spot). Their per­for­mance also made an overnight mil­lion­aire out of 16-year old “solo-mid” (think mid­field tem­po-con­trol) Suma1L, who’s incred­i­ble per­for­mance at the tour­na­ment sig­naled an excit­ing new gen­er­a­tion of eSports play­ers.

How Big Is eSports?

For the unini­ti­at­ed “eSports”, the prac­tice of com­pet­i­tive video gam­ing, may be viewed as an eccen­tric niche – and as recent­ly as a few years ago this may well have been the case. How­ev­er, the sport has expand­ed rapid­ly into an oth­er­wise untapped mar­ket, and the speed of growth has been phe­nom­e­nal.

A 2015 report from Super­da­ta val­ued the glob­al eSports indus­try at $612 mil­lion. That fig­ure takes into account the val­ue of cor­po­rate spon­sor­ships, prize pool con­tri­bu­tions, mer­chan­dise, and tick­et sales for eSports tour­na­ments.

Accord­ing to the report, $374 mil­lion of this fig­ure comes from the Asian mar­ket, and $143 mil­lion from North Amer­i­ca. The val­ue of cor­po­rate spon­sor­ships in North Amer­i­ca is esti­mat­ed to total $111 mil­lion. To put that into fig­ure into con­text, the Wim­ble­don Cham­pi­onships were esti­mat­ed to bring in around $65 mil­lion in rev­enue for spon­sors.

The glob­al reach and pop­u­lar­i­ty of eSports means that it rep­re­sents a huge mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands. Each indi­vid­ual game; Dota2, League of Leg­ends, Star­craft II, can attract can attract audi­ences of mil­lions, and unite fans from Asia, Europe, and North Amer­i­ca.

This is a cru­cial audi­ence to tar­get, espe­cial­ly for brands that want to reach mil­len­ni­als.

“It has become increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult for adver­tis­ers to reach this tech-savvy, afflu­ent demo­graph­ic via tra­di­tion­al mar­ket­ing chan­nels,” said Joost van Dre­unen, CEO and co-founder of Super­Da­ta Research. “Not only does eSports allow to recon­nect with this audi­ence, but since the mar­ket is still at an ear­ly stage, brands can get a lot of bang for their buck.”

Why Is eSports A Massive Opportunity?

There are four key rea­sons why eSports is an incred­i­ble mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty.

1. Global Reach & Growth

The world­ly draw of eSports can’t be under­es­ti­mat­ed. In Asia espe­cial­ly, where eSports pulls in rev­enues of $374 mil­lion, spon­sor­ship can com­mand incred­i­ble media val­ue, and does so in key emerg­ing mar­kets such as Chi­na, and among a valu­able youth demo­graph­ic.

The Dota2 Inter­na­tion­al draws audi­ences in excess of 27 mil­lion (accord­ing to Super­Da­ta), which is con­sid­er­ably more than the U.S. view­er­ship for the 2015 Mas­ters at 14 mil­lion, although still some way off the 114.4 mil­lion view­ers who tuned into Super Bowl 49. (How­ev­er, Dota2 is just one game; the glob­al total for eSports audi­ences may well exceed those of the Super Bowl.)

As to how much more eSports can grow, one can look at the high­ly devel­oped infra­struc­ture in South Korea, where eSports enjoys immense pop­u­lar­i­ty (The New York Times described it as a “nation­al pas­time”). It was revealed recent­ly that there are plans to build a ded­i­cat­ed eSports sta­di­um – a nec­es­sary upgrade con­sid­er­ing that the 2014 League of Leg­ends Cham­pi­onship sold out the 40,000 seater sta­di­um of Seoul’s 2002 World Cup. Some have pre­dict­ed that North Amer­i­can mar­ket will one day emu­late the suc­cess eSports enjoys in South Korea.

North Amer­i­ca is one ter­ri­to­ry where eSports has strong growth poten­tial, but Chi­na, parts of South­east Asia, and Europe are also show­ing signs of a flour­ish­ing eSports scene.

2. Powerful Stories

One of the last­ing impres­sions that will be left by the Dota2 Inter­na­tion­al will be the nar­ra­tives and sto­ries that were cre­at­ed around the event. Before being picked up by Valve, Dota was a game cre­at­ed and sus­tained by its own com­mu­ni­ty. Many of the play­ers com­pet­ing at the Inter­na­tion­al helped define what the game is today, and many have made con­sid­er­able sac­ri­fices to com­pete at the lev­el at which they do.

Last year, Valve released “Free to Play”, a fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary fol­low­ing three pro­fes­sion­al Dota2 play­ers from around the world.

This year Valve pro­duced a series of mov­ing play­er pro­files; videos which explored play­er roots, their life jour­neys, and how they came to be eSports pro­fes­sion­als.

rOtK is noto­ri­ous for being one of the most pas­sion­ate play­ers in the scene.

To an extent, the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of eSports ath­letes are all pio­neers, and there is some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing about eSports’ momen­tous growth and pop­u­lar­i­ty.

From indi­vid­ual play­ers, to devel­op­ers, even fans them­selves have their own unique sto­ries, and com­bined with a com­mit­ted con­tent strat­e­gy such as that of Valve’s, eSports is a immense­ly rich source of sto­ries.

3. Thriving Community

Com­mu­ni­ty is one of the strongest assets of the eSports scene. Nur­tur­ing that com­mu­ni­ty can be extreme­ly reward­ing – stream­ing provider Twitch for exam­ple, have put com­mu­ni­ty at the cen­ter of their strat­e­gy.

When it comes to Dota2, Valve have also made sig­nif­i­cant steps to sup­port com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tives. The Inter­na­tion­al’s prize pool for exam­ple, was direct­ly fund­ed by in-game pur­chas­es, and Dota2 also sup­ports a diverse range of cos­met­ic items which can be trad­ed on Steam.

Com­mu­ni­ties are built on shared val­ues, and a strong one with­in eSports com­mu­ni­ties is a cul­ture of learn­ing (just look at the amount of gam­ing how-tos and play-throughs to get a sense of how impor­tant it is, and the oppor­tu­ni­ty is there for brands to find a niche in which they can engage and enhance the online expe­ri­ences of those com­mu­ni­ties.

4. Access Developing Markets

As pop­u­lar as eSports may already be, it’s still a young mar­ket. Brands who have act­ed as ear­ly adopters are build­ing immense­ly valu­able brand equi­ty with high­ly devot­ed fan­bas­es.

What’s more, there is evi­dence to sug­gest that the mar­ket is high­ly lucra­tive. One source described eSports as an adver­tis­ing gold­mine. Data sug­gests that eSports view­ers spend about $200 a year more on com­put­er hard­ware.

Who Is Already Investing In eSports Marketing?

A num­ber of brands are begin­ning to invest in eSports mar­ket­ing, and these ear­ly adopters may find that invest­ing ear­ly was a smart strat­e­gy in years to come.

One of the most notable brands to invest in eSports mar­ket­ing is Red Bull. The brand has a ded­i­cat­ed eSports cat­e­go­ry on redbull.com, pub­lish­ing a mix­ture of eSports news, fea­tures, and guides around var­i­ous games.

Con­tent is con­sis­tent, fre­quent, and gen­uine­ly use­ful. Red Bull also spon­sors events, which enables com­mu­ni­ties to grow. The brand are quick­ly carv­ing out a niche for them­selves as one of the fore­most brand sup­port­ers amongst eSports com­mu­ni­ties.

Tele­coms providers are begin­ning to rec­og­nize how eSports can fit into their mar­ket­ing strate­gies. Ver­i­zon has announced their inten­tions to invest in eSports rec­og­niz­ing that “video games are one of the most engag­ing and uti­lized forms of con­tent in the world today.”

T‑Mobile is also ramp­ing up their efforts, and enjoyed some media expo­sure as one of the offi­cial spon­sors of EG’s vic­to­ri­ous Dota2 team.

We unlocked an exclu­sive wire­less couri­er! @TMobile is EG’s offi­cial telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider at #TI5! #Uncar­ri­er pic.twitter.com/sXqvulvw3C

— Evil Genius­es (@EvilGeniuses) August 5, 2015

Coke, Intel, and Nis­san are also invest­ing in eSports, for good rea­son accord­ing to Nis­san’s Erich Marx, direc­tor of Inter­ac­tive & Social Media Mar­ket­ing at Nis­san North Amer­i­ca who said eSports “fits per­fect­ly not only with Nis­san prod­ucts, but our mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy.”

How Can Brands Add Value?

Brands look­ing to enter the eSports are­na will need to do more than assess the val­ue of cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship. The eSports scene is one built on the strength of its own com­mu­ni­ties, and one that val­ues this qual­i­ty above all else. If brands want to engage these audi­ences, con­ven­tion­al adver­tis­ing or spon­sor­ship like­ly won’t thrill con­sumers.

As van Dre­unen says “con­tem­po­rary media audi­ences, like Mil­len­ni­als, do not relate to media in the same way that oth­er audi­ences do. Com­pet­i­tive gam­ing is an emer­gent form of enter­tain­ment that presents an entire­ly new expe­ri­ence.”

Those who do man­age to engage these audi­ences how­ev­er, are like­ly to reap the rewards.

“Brands [who are] able to be part of that ini­tial expe­ri­ence is incred­i­bly valu­able in estab­lish­ing a long-term rela­tion­ship with con­sumers.” van Dre­unen said.

Brands look­ing to invest in eSports should look to add val­ue to what is like­ly to still be a devel­op­ing scene. It means becom­ing authen­ti­cal­ly immersed in the com­mu­ni­ty, and engag­ing in inno­v­a­tive ways to add val­ue. The eSports audi­ence is essen­tial­ly a mil­len­ni­al audi­ence, root­ed in com­mu­ni­ty, and one that is often recep­tive to brands that engage with authen­tic­i­ty and val­ue.

Are you con­sid­er­ing invest­ing in eSports mar­ket­ing?