Brands engaging with esports

With global audiences of over 500 million, the question facing brands and advertisers has evolved beyond whether they should engage with esports to how they should maximise engagement. A question which can often prove difficult to answer for non-endemic brands, especially those which don’t know their ARPG from their elbow when it comes to video games as a whole. 

For context, the esports industry is projected to reach more than US$1.6 billion in market revenue by 2023. It is no longer a niche interest of a predominantly young male audience with lower levels of disposable income, in fact gamers and esports fans as a whole are now a much more diverse demographic than most expect. In reality esports is a fragmented community, with thousands of subcultures that change rapidly as new games, platforms and technologies are introduced - which contributes to the fact that its audiences tend to be largely advertising resistant and hard to reach, particularly using traditional media.  

Esports fans tend to view video content through streaming rather than through more...