You can’t consider these numbers to be ordinary. Well, it’s the Chinese esports industry that is talked about after all, which might be the largest esport scene. For 2024, their published China Esports Industry Report by Electronic Sports Committee (ESC) stunned many. Based on this report, the Chinese Esports Industry 2024 revenue reached roughly around $3.8 billion. Now, how did they achieve such high numbers?
How Did These Revenue Came Out
Tournament prizes, sponsorships, streaming, are just some of the many streams of income for the esports scene. What the Chinese esports industry did this year is to grow their support for live streaming content. This makes up more than half of their total revenue, making it the main moneymaker.
These contents are widely enjoyed by fans and the entire community, and eventually, help to gain popularity. With this, they gained millions and millions over live streaming content production, taking up 80.84% of the total revenues.
But besides it, esports club and event revenues also play their part in generating money. They contribute 8.75% respectively in Chinese Esports Industry 2024 revenue. Meanwhile, the remaining 4.04% came from the other income sources of the esports scene.
What in reality turned this intriguing are the mobile games in the market. The 57.6% market share came from mobile games which significantly raised popularity recently. Meanwhile, client-based games only got 26.1% in the market, making the 12% occupied by mobile and client versions. It seems that the accessibility of mobile games got hold of the gamers’ interests, popularizing it.
Game Genres and Competitive Landscape
Just this year, there are many games under popular genres that broke through the gaming community. For Chinese esports, these are the three genres that really stood out for 2024 wrapped. The report mentioned shooters first on the list at 26.1%. After it, it is not surprising to have the MOBA games with 15.2%, after all the great releases this year. To finish up this list is the sports simulation games at 12%.
Also, they have been continuously producing esports events, taking all over the country. They are being loud and thriving from provincial level to major regional events. In fact, they had 124 esports events just this year, 58% of these were done fully offline. Perhaps the accommodation of live audiences helped grow their success.
International Expansion and Global Influence
2024 has been a year that has had Chinese esports go past the domestic borders. They hosted many of the major international events which includes 2024 League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational and CS2 Shanghai Major. Certainly, they are establishing their name to be a significant influence in overseas esports.
Industry Perspectives and Future Outlook
They reached a “milestone for esports” this 2024 as described by the chairman of gaming industry association, Sun Shoushan. These numbers grew more than one can imagine over an esports industry. They take note of the globalization trends and mainstreams to help the Chinese Esports grow titans against the rest.
Up until today, they have an estimated 490 million esports users in China. A number that is way big for any esports scene. However, this is just a 0.42% increase from the previous record, showing that the market might be saturated now. Although Tencent and NetEase are still actively driving these expansion beyond borders to help the community thrive.
Conclusion
Will these numbers grow in 2025? Chinese Esports Industry 2024 revenue of $3.8 billion USD is already huge. This makes it not impossible for them to reach even higher figures this coming 2025. Yet, it can be challenging as they have to approach the development way more innovatively.
