In spite of some of the more hyperbolic declarations by tech journalists, who seemingly believe that esports’ rise will soon do away entirely with the conventional sports industry and its attendant global audience, there’s no denying the fact that the surge of popularity competitive gaming has enjoyed since the outset of 2020 is nothing short of remarkable.

For example, OddsChecker today ranks among the largest comparison platforms furnishing offers to the iGaming and sports betting sector, and it has found that the odds and offers it provides for esports events have enjoyed significantly greater traction than virtually any other global sport over the past three years, thus resulting in high betting volumes.

That means competitive gaming, with its seemingly humble ambitions, has thus far outstripped the likes of T20 cricket, Formula 1 and MMA as the fastest growing sport in the world by this measure.

Charting the Rise of a 21st Century Sport

Now the industry is on track to break $3 billion in annual revenue by the end of 2027, which would make it comfortably the largest of the sports mentioned above – and only 30% smaller than FIFA. This is not bad for a sector that was only worth $194 million in 2014.

Getting to the bottom of precisely why esports has enjoyed such rapid growth is complex as there is no one contributing factor. For one, the 2010s saw the price of both gaming PCs and high-performance smartphones drop markedly, paving the way for more people to enter the sport both as gamers and spectators.

Likewise, sage investment from some of the largest organizations on the globe can’t have hurt either. When Amazon purchased Twitch – the de-facto internet home of the global esports community – in 2014 for $1 billion, many analysts baulked at this seemingly inflated sale price, but this proved to have a huge impact on giving the sector the stimulus – and media attention – it needed in order to break through into mainstream awareness.

Taking a longer view, it’s easy to see that esports’ time had simply come. Whereas competitive gaming had always been a feature of the industry all the way back to the 80s, it took a whole generation of people raised in the 90s heyday of gaming to normalize and create a market capable of launching esports into a global phenomenon.

Web3 Creating New Possibilities

Now the future looks exceedingly bright for esports – and its tech-savvy community will ensure that the sector will eagerly seek to experiment with novel Web3 technologies as a means of furthering its development and ensuring it remains at the forefront of the building conversation between big tech and the entertainment industry.

Mixed Reality and the Metaverse

News of the metaverse appears to have died down for the time following Meta’s botched launch of Horizon Worlds, but make no mistake – this is not the last you’ve heard of what was once referred to as cyberspace.

As VR and AR headsets continue to advance, it’s extremely likely that esports will begin to utilize these technologies in a number of ways. For one, spectators using VR could be granted access to a ‘floating camera’ viewpoint, enabling them to cast around a match to watch the action from their unique perspective.

One could even theoretically adopt a first-person perspective of a given player and watch the action up-close like never before.

As the technology has yet to reach maturity, we have very few examples of what a true ‘VR esport’ could look like. However, with the launch of Apple’s Vision Pro headset now imminent, it’s likely that developers will already be eagerly working on building competitive titles to utilize this disruptive new tech modality.

This is, after all, precisely what happened the last time Apple shook things up with the release of the iPhone, a device that almost completely changed the way we use and interact with mobile hardware.

Professional Play-to-Earn Gaming

Play-to-Earn games are a novel type of video game that integrate the blockchain in order to award players with NFTs and crypto assets for character and level progression. While the current generation of play-to-earn games are best thought of as little more than a proof-of-concept, it’s easy to envisage where deeper integration between the blockchain and future large scale game productions may head.

Consider, for example, the question of esports athlete monetization. A well integrated play-to-earn mechanism could feasibly see gamers entering esports tournaments and competitions, and winning cash prizes in the form of cryptocurrencies for their efforts.

In all likelihood, we’re still around 5 to 10 years off from this eventuality, but some of the biggest publishers in the industry – including EA and Activision-Blizzard, have remarked positively on the potential for integrated Web3 gaming in the future.

The Great AI Frontier 

Looking back on 2023 from the future, it will likely be most keenly remembered for being the moment that Artificial Intelligence models reached a level of sophistication that caused it to become disruptive. From deepfake videos of celebrities, to AI generated photographs winning professional competitions, a new generation of advanced models have asserted themselves into public discourse.

As a result of the rapid development of these AIs, it can be difficult to say with any certainty how exactly AI will come to influence and impact esports – only that it most certainly will.

Consider, for example, the insight esports athletes could gain from having an AI analyze their performance and provide dynamic and bespoke training in order to help players target weaknesses or blind-spots in their play style – and identify openings in opponent’s play that could be exploited.

Already developers are keen to begin working with AI on game development itself. The programming world has been a keen advocate of AI thanks to its ability to automate complex coding tasks, and it’s easy to imagine live service games using AI to rapidly generate new content and levels for players to enjoy.

It is also quite likely that AI will be enlisted to help in cheater detection and refereeing, as it will be able to identify and penalize anomalies faster and with greater accuracy than human stewards will be able to alone.