Competitive gaming has a huge audience, and it’s only getting bigger.
E-sports association Major League Gaming has revealed some statistics relating to its growth, and it’s clear that young men are watching more competitive gaming than ever.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":871761,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,","session":"A"}']In 2013, MLG viewers consumed more than 54 million hours of video content. That’s up from 15.5 million in 2012. It also represents a 1,557 percent increase since 2010, when MLG viewers only watched a total of 3 million hours. The league also revealed that over 90 percent of its viewers are male and half are between the ages of 16 and 34.
To better accommodate its viewers, the company recently launched MLG.tv, which is an online video portal for all MLG-related content.
“MLG’s 1,557 percent growth in live video consumption over the last four years is tremendous, and we expect that demand to continue as we expand our programming via our new MLG.tv premium-video platform in 2014,” MLG chief executive Sundance DiGiovanni said. “With greater viewership than traditional sports broadcasts online and the recent launch of MLG.tv, MLG is the powerhouse property for advertisers to reach the illusive young male demo.”
MLG also noted it has viewer engagement that surpasses the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament, which only had 14 million total hours in 2013. Of course, as the name implies, March Madness is a one-month event. MLG runs video all year round. A better comparison is the average time watched per viewer. In that metric, the e-sports league still comes out on top with 150 minutes per viewer as opposed to 105 minutes per viewer for March Madness.
The company released the following infographic that further illustrates how MLG is growing:
