In a recent TV show, the basketball NBA’s Dallas Mavericks team - Mark Cuban sheds light on esports in the US. Being a wise millionaire investor, Mark Cuban tells us why esports teams won’t be worth the risk.
Answering the question on why didn’t Mark buy a League of Legend team last year, he explains that player overload was due to player overload. He still holds that belief until now as esports is changing so fast. Mark Cuban mentions that esports like Overwatch or League of Legends changes every 90 or 120 days. The meta shift and changes make it “a whole new game”. Obviously, esports is competitive yet so mentally and physically stressful. And that’s brutal. One interesting thing is that Mark Cuban considers games with 5 players esports while Fortnite has yet to become one.
Esports is financially bad
Another bad aspect of esports Mark also states that many people buy into teams without any idea how bad the business is. It happens not just for esports itself but other esports as well. At first glance, esports is good and growing fast. However, domestically in the US, owning a team is an awful business.
The reason why we don’t have a full view of how bad esports is as a business is over-evaluation. Many people are trying to make esports look better than what it actually is just to raise more money. It can be viewed through the number of viewers and streams. While the number is strong in Europe and Asia, the viewership in the US is pretty weak. Mark Cuban mentions the viewership in the Overwatch League with around 300,000 viewers - not a huge number.
In his response to the question of where will be the good venture he makes, Mark thinks that the Asia market is pretty good, especially in China. The money here is real and abundant. However, in the US market, there is not so much. He mentions Ninja, the streamer has earned tons of money by streaming, as an example. Ninja has recently moved to Mixer as making that much money on Twitch may have tired him out.
While the esports scene in the US is bleak, esports is still growing fast in Europe and Asia. India and South Asia are booming with mobile games and an active esports scene. Global Esports with their expanding business may have a say about esports being "an awful business". Their recent partnership with Razer has proved to be crucial in attracting sponsorship and money from other big organizations.
What do you think about esports? Will it grow big eventually to match the potential?