COVID-19 affects esports industry

Sean Liuli

A student wakes up to the sound of a notification from his phone. He turns to his nightstand, checking his alarm clock. 3:30 am, it reads. He knows that today, exactly at this time, he was supposed to be in Korea, watching his favorite esports team play.

He knows that he should have been sitting in one of the largest stadiums in the world, listening to the loudspeakers booming with the casters’ voices desperately trying to keep up with everything going on around him.

He knows that he should have been feeling the thunder of the crowd. Hundreds of fans seated across the stadium, each cheering for their own team, hoping that they will be the ones to take home the title and the millions of dollars on the line this year.

But this year is different. This year, he’s watching from home. This year, there will be no crowd, no loudspeakers, and no stadium. But that will not stop him from watching.

Esports is currently one of the fastest-growing industries in the world. The multi-billion dollar investment banking company, Goldman Sachs, expects esports to surpass both the NHL and MLB, and rival the NFL in viewership numbers by 2022.

But with the recent outbreak of COVID-19, several things have impacted the industry. Leagues are making changes after being forced to push almost all tournaments and events online.

Without traditional local area network-based tournaments, teams have had to deal with online play difficulties: inconsistent pings across different regions and the lack of player-to-player interaction.

“With North America being localized with best of threes on LAN, it sucks playing online in Europe with high ping and best of ones with draws,” Niclas Mouritzen, a professional “Rainbow Six: Siege” player for one of Europe’s top team, G2 eSports, said.

The North American division of “Rainbow Six: Siege’s” professional scene recently decided to run only localized tournaments, where players would not have to suffer from the problems of long-distance

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play. However, the European division remains online, which is what Mouritzen complains about.

“I love competitive integrity, and North America has the most of that with the new format by far,” Mouritzen said.

However, some do not see this as a big problem.

“I would guess that it has had a small impact on the players if it all. If I had to guess, I would say the big difference is not being able to bond with teammates by seeing them in person,” Stephen Abbas, the president of Esports Club, said.

Esports Club has faced similar difficulties during the pandemic. According to Abbas, organizing has been challenging since everything has gone online.

“Organizing esports during the pandemic was difficult because it’s hard to gauge interest over text. If the meetings were in-person, I could talk one-on-one with people and get a better sense of what they’re thinking,” Abbas said.

Although organizing events has become more complex, the industry has benefited from the growth in viewership due to everyone being indoors. According to Activision Blizzard, the company that develops the popular esports title “Overwatch,” this year’s Overwatch League Grand Finals gained more than 1.55 million viewers, making it the most-watched event in the league’s history.

However, even though viewership numbers are up, that does not mean that viewers enjoy watching the streams.

“To be honest, even though I’m watching a lot more, it’s not as interesting since it’s all the same teams,” Jake Generalis, a sophomore, said.

Because of the pandemic, leagues have not been able to branch out which would allow new teams to play. For these reasons, leagues have been recycling the same teams through similar tournaments.

In addition to leagues not adding new teams, teams have not been able to add new players. Without roster changes, viewers who want to see their favorite talents join their favorite teams are not happy to see the same players over and over.

One prime example of this was Valorant’s Ignition Series tournaments. North America repeatedly saw teams like Sentinels, TSM, and Cloud9 at the top.

Many agree that aside from the lack of in-person play and the growth in viewership, people have not seen many changes.

Abbas said, “I don’t think the pandemic had a huge impact on the industry other than forcing them to get a little creative with how they stream matches.”