Editor’s note: This article is a reprint of one that appears on NewZoo’s web site.

This Saturday will see 15,000 spectators descend on the Staples Center in Los Angeles to watch the League of Legends World Championship Final Event. Gaming as a professional sport has been around for a long time and has enjoyed mass popularity in Asia for years. Now the phenomenon is breaking out of niche status, attracting millions of game enthusiasts as followers in the West. Sudden mass uptake of eSports over the past year has also made game video streams the fastest growing content on the web, including YouTube and specialized destinations like Twitch.tv, who raised $20 million this week to support its explosive growth and global expansion.

Gaming on PC more popular than consoles

While Western press focus their attention on the next-gen console battle between Xbox One and PlayStation 4, PC Gaming is leading the industry in eSports and video content as well as in number of gamers on a global scale with around 900 million players. From a screen perspective, games played on the computer screen also gross more revenues than games played on TV: $27.6 billion or 39 percent versus $25.4 billion or 36 percent. Worldwide that is. The PC platform continues to shape trends and lead innovation in the industry in terms of game genres, free-to-play business models and now… eSports and video content. The new consoles Xbox One and PS4 will provide integrated functionalities allowing console gamers to follow the path originally carved out by PC gaming. Console-based eSports leagues do exist but not on the same scale as the PC franchises such as Starcraft, Dota2, World of Tanks and League of Legends.

Facts and figures on PC Gaming, eSports and game video content

  • Games played on a PC will generate $27.6 billion this year, 39 percent of the total games market. This includes money spent on casual websites and social networks. Without these “casual” segments, the global PC/MMO market is worth $21 billion. Approximately 40 percent of the 900 million PC/MMO gamers worldwide spends money on, or rather within, these games.
  • This year, American gamers account for $4.3 billion in spending on PC/MMO games or 20.3 percent of the global PC/MMO market.  The Asia-Pacific region represents $11.0 billion or 52.6 percent of the PC pie.
  • Of all PC/MMO gamers worldwide, 19 percent or 230 million can be called an enthusiast or core gamer, based on a combination of variables such as time, spending behavior and genre preferences.  This group of consumers is largely responsible for the growth of eSports and game video content.
  • Over 100 million Americans play PC/MMO games, almost two thirds of all gamers. 21 percent or 23 million of these gamers can be considered to be enthusiast or core gamers. Using the same variables for console gamers leads to a number of 24.1 million Americans. There is an enormous overlap between these two groups: 18.7 million gamers can be considered both console as PC/MMO game enthusiasts.
  • Game video community website Twitch saw its unique viewer audience grow from 3.2 million per month in June 2011 to over 44 million in August this year.
  • Early this year, Youtube reported that time spent viewing gaming content more than doubled from 2011 to 2012, making it the fastest growing content category. Almost half, 47 percent, was spent on content generated by consumers.
  • The largest international eSports league, the ESL, reports that 33 million hours have already been spent this year watching their eSports video content, up almost 100 percent since last year. Over 750,000 gamers visited ESL’s Intel Extreme Masters Series 7 events.
  • Global prize money for the bigger eSports events will be over $12 million this year, four times higher than in 2010. An increasing number of non-gaming companies are jumping on the opportunity to become partners of eSports events, including RedBull, Logitech and Plantronics.
  • The worlds’ largest payment service provider for games, GlobalCollect, reported that the fastest growing countries from Q1 2012 to Q1 2013 in terms of online payments for PC/MMO games were Malaysia, Thailand and Korea, each with over 100 percent growth.

Source: Newzoo