Esports sells out arenas, attracts traditional sports players and is being considered for the 2024 Olympics. Competitive gaming has planted itself firmly in pop culture, making it the subject of a new arena—scripted TV.
Art imitates life, and video games occasionally make their way onto popular TV programs as a one-time theme. Gaming-related episodes have appeared on TV shows like Law & Order: SVU and Elementary. The latter even cast real esports professionals for an episode in February about the murder of a former pro gamer.
In other words, gaming has traditionally been a cameo appearance, not the star—but that’s all changing.
Debuting August 30 on YouTube Red, Good Game is a six-episode series that follows a team of gamers trying to become stars in the world of esports. The show stars YouTube personalities Arin Hanson and Dan Avidan (Game Grumps) as two of the main esports players trying to make it big.
YouTube is a natural outlet for a show of this type, considering two of the top five YouTube channels are game related. Believe it or not, gaming has become a spectator sport—with 48 percent of YouTube gamers saying they spend more time watching gaming videos than actually playing.
The top video-hosting site penned a multi-year partnership with leading esports platform FaceIt, creators of the Esports Championship Series (ECS) earlier this year. YouTube is now the exclusive livestreaming home to ECS, which features Valve’s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO).
“YouTube has the biggest gaming audience. It’s time to introduce more gamers to esports,” Ryan Wyatt, global head of gaming content at YouTube, told AlistDaily. “We have a lot of people on YouTube who don’t know what esports is. We feel we’re well-positioned to expand this audience.”
Game video content (GVC) is the new TV. SuperData found that more people watch GVC than HBO, Netflix, ESPN and Hulu combined, and the audience for this content is twice the size of the US population. Could esports-centric content win viewers back?
Disney is tapping into this engaged audience with D|XP and a new partnership with ESL. Two new series are in development—ESL Brawlers and ESL Speedrunners, each consisting of seven, 30-minute shows.
“From ESL’s perspective, as esports has gone more mainstream, it makes sense to expand its audience reach to those tuning in on linear TV,” Nik Adams, ESL’s senior vice president of global media rights and distribution told AListDaily. “Given the demographic, esports has traditionally reached a digitally native audience. However, the industry is continually evolving and this deal represents a great way for traditional media companies to adopt this growing area of entertainment . . . Disney’s D|XP is the perfect platform for us to continue creating original programming, and this time, to specifically engage their audience.”
With so many non-endemic brands entering the esports space with sponsorships, branded content is another way of reaching the gaming audience.
Last year, Geico created a comedy series around its sponsored team, SoloMid (TSM). The real-life gamers, known for competing in League of Legends, all live and practice in the same house—as is common in the industry during competition season.
Geico’s series TSM’s New Neighbor tells the story of Russell, an obnoxious neighbor who barges his way into their home and comedy ensues. Russell suspects that the boys are hackers because of their high-tech equipment, but makes himself right at home when he learns their true identities and it seems they will never be rid of him.
According to Newzoo’s 2017 Global Esports Market Report, the global esports audience will reach 385 million in 2017—made up of 191 million esports enthusiasts and a further 194 million occasional viewers.
That’s a whole lot of fans to entertain, and scripted TV could be just the way to do it.