JOHANNESBURG – GAMeS (Global Assembly Marketing eSports), in partnership with rAge, will launch Africa’s first eSports Branding Summit at the rAge Expo on Friday 7 October 2016. The half-day event will explore opportunities eSports presents to South African business and how it can capitalise on the eSports phenomenon, which is taking millennial audiences by storm across the globe.
Mlondi Mashinini, GAMeS summit programme director, says eSports research from SuperData projects that the total worldwide market for eSports will reach $910 million in 2016. The largest eSports prize pool was US$20.77 million at this year’s The International 6 Dota 2 competition with the largest audience being the 334 million people who watched the 2015 League of Legends World Championships.
“The goal of the Summit will be to unpack the trends which are happening internationally as well as locally and expand brands’ horizons around the potential of eSports in an African context,” he says.
eSports has until 2016 largely been an underground movement in South Africa. Having said that, PwC benchmarks the South African gaming industry at over R2.6 billion, estimating it will reach R3.6 billion by 2019.
“While millions of gamers across the country buy games every month and fill up local servers every night competing against their online adversaries, for the most part, they have remained a market segment which is largely unidentified nor targeted by South African business,” Mashinini says. That’s fast changing with cumulative prize money at local eSports competitions nearing the R2 million mark in 2016, while international eSports competitions have for the first time appeared on local TV networks.
Representatives from the local eSports industry, as well as broadcasters and agencies working in the industry will discuss the size, activities and audience the local gaming community represents and how eSports is likely to become a household viewing activity in South African homes alongside traditional sport and entertainment in years to come. “eSports is growing at an unprecedented pace and the effectiveness of any attempt to reach an eSports audience rests on a brand’s ability to deliver a relevant message to a largely millennial audience, which is fast moving away from traditional media platforms.
Seats are limited and can be booked here: https://esportsbrandingsummit.eventbrite.com/
For more information go to www.rageexpo.co.za or http://gamesagency.co/
Adapted from a press release
