The global ESports industry keeps on growing and it shows no signs of slowing down in 2025. It was worth approximately $2.3 billion in 2024, with that figure expected to rise to as much as $7.03 billion by 2029 . People around the world simply can’t get enough of Esports.
What’s great is that there are many ways to get involved. As well as playing the games themselves, you can watch famous players stream their gaming sessions, follow competitions and tournaments, and even place bets on the biggest sports. A growing number of online sportsbooks accept bets on Esports and GGBet is one of them. This is a sign that Esports are fast growing in popularity.
It’s safe to say that Esports will become even bigger throughout 2025, but what about changes? Will there be anything different this year compared to previous years?
Demographics
One thing that people have noticed about Esports is that it’s a very male-dominated industry. Not just that, it’s also very youth-dominated. While adults create the games, run the events and keep the industry going, it’s well known that most of the players who turn up to the top-level competitions and tournaments are young men.
Throughout 2025 and beyond, there’s a good chance that this key demographic will change. There are already efforts being made to make Esports more welcoming to women and girls , and an increasing number of females have been getting into Esports since the pandemic. There may never be a 50-50 gender balance, but females will no doubt become a lot more noticeable at all levels of Esports in the near future.
Betting Partnerships
Towards the end of 2024, it was announced that Riot Games was going to start allowing betting sponsorships to happen. Riot Games is a key player in the industry as it’s behind the very popular games League of Legends and Valorant. From 2025 onwards, teams for both of these games will be able to form sponsorship deals with betting companies .
This hadn’t been allowed for quite a few years, presumably because Riot Games didn’t want to encourage gambling. The reason the company has relented is money. Its games are among the biggest in the industry and allowing betting companies to sponsor teams that play them could be a very lucrative move. This is part of Riot Games’ ongoing efforts to generate more revenue. The company previously raised the minimum age for tournament competitors from 17 to 18 to enable new advertising streams, i.e. from alcohol companies.
Consolidation
While the Esports industry is huge, some would say it’s not as interconnected as it should be. This is because some games are popular in one part of the world and not another and the biggest games seem to have their own way of doing things when it comes to tournaments.
There’s been a significant effort to consolidate Esports and bring the many different parts of the industry together. This will come to a head with the inaugural Olympic Esports Games, which will take place in Saudi Arabia. Other, similar ones have taken place, though this will be the biggest and most significant in the history of the industry to date.
One of the previous events was the Olympic Esports week which was held in Singapore in 2023. This was a sort of test to see how a full-scale Olympic event could work and whether there would be enough demand for one. The first official Olympic Esports Games will adhere to Olympic values while also promoting gender equality within Esports and engaging the younger generation. It should also give the industry a much larger global platform and attract new people to it.
AI
Though controversial, AI has become widely used and is being adopted in more and more industries. The world of gaming has always been keen to explore new technologies, showcase the latest software and push the boundaries of what computer programming can do. Naturally, embracing AI is the next major step for the industry. While some companies are already using AI, it could become more widespread in 2025, especially when it comes to Esports.
There are many ways AI can benefit Esports . For example, it can improve the games themselves and make them more immersive and responsive to players’ input, analyze large amounts of gameplay data more efficiently and help teams develop strategies that are more likely to succeed.
The key advantage of AI is that it can do in no time at all what it would take multiple people a long time to do. It’s much faster at providing results and its results are often more in-depth and detailed than what people would produce. When it comes to any sort of decision that involves looking at data, there’s every reason to turn to AI. Teams can use it to pick the best new player to add to their roster, betting fans can use it to more accurately predict tournament winners and the players themselves can use it to improve their performance.
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