Page 27 - AdNews May-June 2020

A Gaming Nation
The pandemic has thrown gaming and esports into
the spotlight, but experts say it already had earned the attention of advertisers. We speak to those familiar with the space for more on the opportunity for brands.
Crowds outside of Melbourne’s Albert Park were turned away just hours before the first practice sessions for the Australian Grand Prix were due to start. The sudden cancellation of the event, which attracts some 300,000 people, came in response to fears of coronavirus spreading among crowds and workers. For the same reason, after the government advised against the gathering of people, a long list of Australia’s favourite sports competitions were suspended. From NRL, AFL and Test cricket locally, to the English Premier League, NBA and even the Tokyo Olympics internationally. Australia, a “sporting nation”, was left without live games during indefinite lockdowns.
But one sport was still carrying on relatively unscathed; esports. After the Australian Grand Prix was suspended, London-based Veloce Esports put together a livestream event called “Not the Aus GP”. It featured F1 driver Lando Norris,
Formula E driver Stoffel Vandoorne, Real Madrid goal- keeper Thibaut Courtois, as well as some of esports’ top competi- tors. With just three days’ notice,
the stream reached more than 175,000 concurrent viewers across YouTube and Twitch, an Amazon-owned platform for streaming games. Veloce Esports cofounder Jamie MacLaurin called the results “nothing short of insanity”.
Not the Aus GP was the start of a trend where esports, along with gaming, not only continued during lockdowns, but also began filling the void left by traditional sports. While the terms gaming and esports are often used interchangeably, the two are separate sectors. Gaming is simply the playing of video games, from Call of Duty to Candy Crush. The Interactive Games and Entertainment Association (IGEA) organ- ises gamers along a spectrum, from “casual gamers” who typically play 10 minutes
twice a day, to “in-depth” gamers who typically play for at least one hour daily. Weeks into the lockdowns, gaming companies began to report a spike in users. According to a report released by We Are Social and Hootsuite, weekly downloads of mobile games around the world jumped by 30% in March compared to weekly averages for the final quarter of 2019, with people downloading more than a billion games each week. Meanwhile, Twitch’s average concurrent views nearly doubled deep into lockdowns, according to TwitchTracker, rising from about 1.3 million in
January to 2.5 million in April.
WORDS BY
MARIAM CHEIK-HUSSEIN
www.adnews.com.au | May-June 2020 27