Michael Pachter is a consumer analyst at Wedbush Morgan, a leading financial services and investment firm. He hosts a weekly show on gametrailers.com, in which he answers user e-mailed questions. This week, among other topics, he makes his prediction on the future of E-sports, the full video can be found here.
In summary, Pachter says that last year he would have compared E-sports to women's basketball, but this year it is comparable to college baseball, a larger, and yet still limited audience. He expects the audience for E-sports to double every two years for the next ten years. He also says that the most important part of E-sports is building a competitive community where everyone can easily compare their skill levels. This is quite an optimistic outlook on his part, even predicting that E-sports will be televised in the not-too-distant future.
Basically:
1. Audience size will double every two years over the next 10 years
2. E-sports is comparable to College Baseball
3. An active, playing community is key to growth
4. E-sports will eventually be on TV
Edit: My mistake, he compares to college baseball, not basketball. I misheard him. Special thanks to Encrypto for noticing.
I would also like to add that if this is your first experience with Pachter, you should not take the embedded three minute video below as proof of his ignorance. He does tend to over-exaggerate, but it must be remembered that for someone who is so vocal in the gaming community, three minutes of negative footage isn't all that much. He tends to ramble off script, and I think that that is the source of many of these quotes. Please try to comment on what he said now rather than nit-picking prior mistakes.
On February 19 2012 10:37 hunger wrote: I always thought iNcontroL seemed like a WNBA player...
Regardless of the unnecessary iNcontroL bashing, bashing college basketball by comparing it to the WNBA? College basketball has so many more viewers than the WNBA it's not even close.
That one might be difficult, considering the *playing community has been declining by pretty large amounts every season. well, we'll see what happens after HOTS!
I've never heard of Wedbush Morgan, it is def not a leading financial services firm. Also, I would wager that WNBA still has more fans than Esports does. I would say Esports is similar to billiards/bowling in terms of viewership, and the optimistic case would be MMA/UFC.
This is a very awesome prediction to be made by someone like him, but something else has to be said -- this is for E-Sports, not necessarily Starcraft and that has to be swallowed. SC2 might be left completely in the dust as some other game, one that hasn't even started production yet perhaps, comes out of nowhere and takes it. If we want this shit to flourish, we need to support ANYTHING that has potential to make E-Sports big. Not just Starcraft.
Although, I would love it for SC2 to be on TV 10 years from now ^_^
On February 19 2012 10:46 kakaman wrote: I've never heard of Wedbush Morgan, it is def not a leading financial services firm. Also, I would wager that WNBA still has more fans than Esports does. I would say Esports is similar to billiards/bowling in terms of viewership, and the optimistic case would be MMA/UFC.
WNBA does not has more fans than e-sports does, please.
On February 19 2012 10:46 kakaman wrote: I've never heard of Wedbush Morgan, it is def not a leading financial services firm. Also, I would wager that WNBA still has more fans than Esports does. I would say Esports is similar to billiards/bowling in terms of viewership, and the optimistic case would be MMA/UFC.
WNBA does not has more fans than e-sports does, please.
"Fan" is a very loosely defined term, on both sides of the coin. WNBA does have more fans than Esports, I would bet, however. It's not a longshot at all.
EPT
