K-Content News

The Rise of e-Sports and Stature of Professional Gamers

- The future of the e-Sports market and gamers, expected to be a 3-trillion Won industry by 2022

Korean gaming culture began when the game ‘Starcraft’ launched by Blizzard Entertainment became a worldwide craze. The popularity of Starcraft naturally led to game competitions, and the rise of a sports culture of fans watching these competitions.
For this reason, Starcraft became known as the prototype for e-sports. Around this time, the term e-sports was coined, and numerous e-sports broadcasting stations sprang up.
E-sports, now in its 20th year, is set to debut as an official competitive sport in the 2022 Asian Games. Work is also actively underway to bring e-sports into the Olympic games. In this environment, Korean gamers are reigning as veritable gods in key e-sports games. LEE Sang Hyuk, a professional gamer competing in League of Legends (LOL - an online PC game from Riot Games), one of the 6 games in the Asian Games, is known as ‘the Messi of e-sports’ thanks to his aggressive and creative playing style. His annual salary is reported to be in the range of 4.5 to 5 billion Won.
Korea’s reputation of ‘ruling the gaming world’ continues to hold true. According to English e-sports expert and journalist since 2001 Duncan Shields (pen name Thorin), “Korean (e-sports) athletes are unbelievably diligent and hard-working, meaning lack of support or unfavorable environments affect them very little; the difference between them and Western (e-sports) athletes is that the coaching staff will point out problems and require improvement from even the best athletes, and that the athletes will accommodate.” Shields added, “This is why when Korean athletes dedicate themselves to a particular game it will inevitably lead to their dominance, as was the case with Starcraft and League of Legends.”

Gamers, Managers and Commentators Created by ‘Star League’

Given the circumstances, it is inevitable that professional gaming has become a career path desired by many Korean children. While professional gaming does seem to be promising, whether or not it is stable enough to consider as a real vocation is another question. For athletes to make a living through games – that is, for professional gamers to make stable incomes – there has to be a large number of ‘leagues’ in which they can compete and win prize money.
In the years of Starcraft, when e-sports was only just born, new leagues would spring up naturally. With so many people playing the game, small competitions would be held in local PC cafes, later growing in size. A key example was the ‘Star League,’ which was run and broadcast by game broadcast channel OnGameNet for more than 10 years. Star League introduced the world to professional gamers like Slayers_Boxer, and professional gaming teams that brought together athletes like him.
New jobs were created by the league, including coaching staff to professionally manage the athletes, referees to manage and supervise games fairly, and commentators to analyze and provide commentary on game data.
With the popularity of the Star League, game developers began to host leagues of their own to attract fans who could later become users of their games. But these one-off leagues didn’t offer any job stability for professional gamers. The problem was a lack of incentive for professional gamers to compete in a given game. If skilled gamers do not participate in leagues, then developers’ plans to attract fans and potential users will fail. Game developers were quick to realize their initial mistake, and instead hosted regularly scheduled leagues that ran for four months each, twice or three times a year.
One source at PUBG, which is preparing to start a regular league based on the success of the game ‘Player Unknown’s BattleGround,’ commented, “we will provide incentives to professional gamers, who play a critical role in forming the game’s fandom, by sharing the league’s profits with them.’
Game developers have begun to recognize the potential of leagues as a massive separate source of profits, and not just a marketing tool. According to game market researchers Newzoo, the size of this year's e-sports market is estimated to reach 960 million Dollars (approximately 1 trillion Won), up 38.2% from last year. Goldman Sachs forecasts that the e-sports market will reach the 3 billion Dollar mark (approximately 3 trillion Won) by 2022.
We are also seeing ‘e-sports management’ companies who turn professional gamer contents into profits. 'Kongdu Kongdoo Company’ operates professional gaming teams in key games, while engaging in incidental businesses to raise profits from the brand value of their athletes. This includes content planning and distribution as well as advertising for individual broadcasts run by their gamers.
Recently, professional gamers have been building their brand value while active as athletes by broadcasting on platforms such as YouTube and Afreeca TV, so that they are able to continue to make money even after retiring from competition. A former professional gamer commented “Before, if a professional gamer retired, the only way to keep making money was to become a member of the coaching staff. In the past year, though, there has been an explosion in the number of currently active professional gamers who make additional profits on the side through private broadcasts.” This means diversification of sources of profits in addition to prize money from leagues. This expansion guarantees e-sports’ entry into the Asian Games and Olympic Games and a bright future for e-sports as a whole, while opening up infinite possibilities for those who dream of becoming professional gamers.

JANG, Woo-Jeong, Correspondent, Economy Chosun (woo@chosunbiz.com)