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New Threat To Traditional Sports Leagues: Millennials Prefer Watching eSports (venturebeat.com)
Professional sports leagues "officially have a millennial problem," writes VentureBeat, citing some interesting findings from L.E.K. Consulting.
- 40% of millennials prefer watching esports to traditional sports
- 26% of millennial eSports enthusiasts reported a significant uptick in eSports viewing over the past year
- 61% of esports followers said they spent less time watching TV over the past 12 months, and 45% said they had cut back on traditional sports viewing
- Together millennials -- ages 17-34 -- and Generation Z peers -- age 16 and under -- comprise 45% of America's consumer base
"At a certain point, this comes down to a new form of media better serving an upcoming generation of consumers," concludes VentureBeat. "Esports leagues are all online. Most matches stream for free on sites like Twitch. They are available on the web or through smartphone apps. Competitive gaming is easily accessible, and it lives where Millennials are already spending their time."
Maybe that's why Major League Baseball's video streaming company recently paid $300 million for the right to stream League of Legends through 2023.
Esports doesn't:
Require tax hikes to pay for bazillion dollar stadiums every decade lest the team pitch a fit and threaten to leave. Then, to add insult to injury, make you pay for parking, overcharge for shitty food and watered down beer, then make you pay through the nose for tickets. Good tickets are reserved for those with very deep pockets.
Have competitors who make $20, $50, $100M dollar contracts. They throw a fucking ball for fucks sake.
Require a subscription to E$PN or some giant Sports Package just to watch your team play.
I don't really watch neither of them but if I had to make a choice, it wouldn't be traditional sports. Fuck those greedy bastages.
Depends mostly on their parents' income and how much of it they let them squander.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Your post is dumb. I am a millennial and can do without people like you. I deserve a participation trophy for showing up here and posting. That participation trophy should include mod points so I can censor your dumb post to -1 where it belongs.
The 17-34 year old ones do have less spending power than older generations, BUT!
This is where details come handy.
You can't only look at spending power as a whole - you need to look at what their spending power goes to.
Say a 40 year old has a discretionary amount of 1000 dollars a month, out of which most goes on booze, trips and porn magazines. They spend zero on eSports.
At the same time, a 21-year old has 200 dollars a month available, out of which 100 goes to eSports and related activities (CS:GO skins and shit like that).
From an eSports perspective, who is your target?
I agree that "45% of America's consumer base" doesn't mean shit as a statistic, but break it down to specifics and the picture changes radically.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Tired of the general populace subsidizing sports channels.
https://www.outkickthecoverage...
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
What will be their spending power in a few years? Professional sports are trying to maximize short term profits at the expense of future earnings.
My wife are at the leading edge of the millenials and have lost nearly all interest in the sports we grew up watching and now that we have dispensable income we've found other things to spend it on. We grew up fans of certain teams because we watched them with parents and grandparents on free OTA TV.
After we graduated we tried to keep up with our Alma maters and watch our professional teams but the sports industry decided to make that impossible to do. When we were younger we'd go to a bar and try and catch the game but as we aged that became less and less entertaining.
I even tried to pirate streams for a while because the local team decided it didn't fill enough $$$$ seats so they wouldn't air it. Or because we were closer in nautical miles to another sports team AND it was an NFC vs AFC game that it could only be watched on ESPN4, UNLESS we had the Plaid Sports channel with the blackout exception package. After a while we just gave up and moved on.
I'm watching our younger siblings and their peers do the same. Because they don't have money it's "Pay rent" or "Buy Big10/SEC Network to watch football games" and Rent wins. My school can't figure out why they can't fill seats and it's because 0-12 year olds aren't excited about a team they've never seen play because their parents never watched it while they were growing up. Going to a Big 10 rivalry game was usually a Birthday present for me and my peers, but we watched it on ABC or NBC every other week.
And they can't claim that the technology or demand wasn't there. Mark Cuban started out with phone lines so IU alumni could listen to home Basketball games, that turned into broadcast.com which Yahoo bought out. Professional sports could have charged a simple nominal fee to listen to 'home' games since 2000 and they decided to double down on the Cable route.
I'm thinking that would be during the flush process, after the recently added "contents" are gone, but the water hasn't started filling back up. So there's a chance you can just towel it off and it'll keep working for you. ;)