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From around February of 2020, Canada and a number of other high-profile countries introduced various lockdowns to help stem the infection rate of COVID-19.
This led to some disastrous economic downturns but not every industry suffered. While some sectors will continue to struggle into 2021 and many businesses will ultimately fold, the iGaming and eSports industries have had an uptick in their growth.
Our writer Daniel Bennet has more on this subject as well as various others and you can find his work here. In the meantime, let’s delve into which industry benefited the most during lockdown.
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Who Showed More Growth Between the iGaming and eSports Industries?
Both college events and sports took a major negative impact during the COVID crisis, something that affects readers of COED, but it hasn’t been bad for all. Not that this is sort of inappropriate competition, but it would be very interesting to know who out of the two modern, booming sectors came out on top in this unprecedented time.
The Case for the iGaming Industry
The overall popularity of iGaming is not something new. However as more people went online during lockdown, it was one of the industries to benefit greatly from the fact that people were told to stay home as much as possible.
Everything in iGaming has been pushed up the ladder. Those who never played before have now turned to it, those who were rather part-time players are now playing like pros and those who played frequently are now spending huge sums on their favourite pastime.
On the whole, both the gaming world and online gambling industry did very well out of the lockdowns imposed in Canada, online casinos such as Winz.IO Casino reporting good figures for example.
What are the highlights of the growth in iGaming during the lockdowns imposed around Canada and the rest of the world:
- More iGaming options became available
- More new players joined in
- Current players increased their spend
- iGaming produced more mobile apps
- Those who usually budget for other entertainment spent it on iGaming
Clearly then this was a good business period for the iGaming industry, but did eSports do any better?
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The Case for the eSports Industry
There was a major boost for eSports during the COVID-19 lockdowns, and that is the fact that professional sports were postponed in most areas.
eSports, whether everyone agrees or not, are indeed forms of sporting competition and so when more than half the world’s population was locked down by April and major events such as the Olympics couldn’t take place, we needed a different sort of fix.
It is estimated by some that 30% more people viewed eSports events than usual during the initial months of lockdown in 2020. While the numbers aren’t official yet and they may have dropped more recently, that is still a big bump. Here are the highlights so far for the eSports industry:
- Bets increased on online sportsbooks for eSports events
- Viewership increased across the board
- Sponsorship of events increased due to the lack of ‘real’ sport
- Participation increased and became less male-focused
It would seem that in the early days of the lockdown eSports had an advantage in as much as not only were existing fans of the concept of watching and participating, but also fans of traditional sports.
Furthermore, fans of football, hockey, baseball and basketball were even placing online bets on the outcome of eSports events to get their usual sports betting fix.
Conclusion
With figures having been released yet for 2020 it is hard to say who did best out of this lockdown era, in fact, it’s fair to say that both eSports and iGaming can count themselves very lucky indeed.
