With the 12 months coming to a detailed, the tournaments wrapped up, and gamers readying themselves for subsequent 12 months’s campaigns, it’s time to look again at all the things that occurred and the state of the esports business in 2024.
Right here’s our recap and evaluation of Esports in 2024:
PGL Copenhagen Main 2024 Stage Storming
Picture Credit score: PGL
After an inauspicious begin with Katowice in February, the Counter-Strike world be rocked by what was maybe the weird in-person prevalence ever at a stay esports occasion. In the course of the PGL Copenhagen Main 2024, protestors stormed the stage in the course of the G2 vs. MOUZ quarterfinal.
This was finally found to be a protest/promoting stunt by a rival Counter-Strike pores and skin buying and selling platform to G2’s former sponsors CSGOROLL. The storming was deliberate and perpetrated by folks affiliated with CSGOEmpire. Total, the complete incident was an odd and disappointing begin to the esports 12 months.
Counter-Strike pores and skin buying and selling isn’t precisely the shining beacon of integrity at the most effective of occasions. By mirroring techniques much like teams like Simply Cease Oil, who made headlines all through 2023 and 2024 by storming levels, throwing soup and paint over well-known work, and usually doing ‘nuisance’ protests, the CS pores and skin buying and selling business additional donned the clown make-up it already wore so effectively.
Fortunately, this was an remoted incident. I’d like to say that esports has upped its safety, and pores and skin merchants have reneged on their methods, however in actuality that’s simply not occurred. In a flippantly reported incident at TI13, a number of Dota 2 followers with BOXI written throughout their chest have been caught as they stormed the stage making an attempt to have a good time with TI-winners Workforce Liquid. Three of the 4 have been apprehended by safety earlier than making the stage.
Cell Esports Growth in 2024-2025
Picture Credit score: EWC
The massive winner by way of enlargement in 2024 has been the general cellular esports scene. As soon as a fringe a part of the business, centered primarily in markets like India and SEA, cellular esports has expanded significantly with an enormous quantity of occasions this 12 months and subsequent.
The sub-genre’s largest boon is its accessibility. Video games like MLBB, PUBG Cell, and HoK are on the trail to world domination, and have grown in reputation even exterior of their conventional heartlands in China and SEA.
It’s the long run planning that’s the most important shock. Over the previous 12 months, MLBB, PUBG, and others have all laid down expansive plans for the long run, with worldwide tournaments, regional occasions, and third-party event assist. And that’s earlier than we take into account the likes of the Esports World Cup, the place Cell Esports had a broad world viewers for maybe the primary time.
The Esports World Cup 2024
Picture Credit score: EWC
If there was one occasion that overshadowed all else in 2024, and can possible achieve this for the foreseeable future, it’s the Esports World Cup 2024. Organized by the ESL FACE IT group, a subsidiary of the Savvy Gaming Group, an entirely owned a part of the Saudi Arabian Public Funding Fund, the EWC was the end result of round two years of acquisitions and mergers.
The Saudi Arabian Authorities-backed EWC ran for eight weeks from July to August, absorbing 20% of the complete esports calendar right into a black gap. Throughout that point it mired the business in ‘discussions’ about its ethics, high quality, the security of rivals, and, by much less respected voices, how dang nice it was. After the mud settled, Workforce Falcons, a Saudi Arabian-based workforce additionally supported and funded by the Saudi Arabian state, have been declared the general winners of the event their sponsor’s mother or father firm organized.
Past simply the plain criticisms about sports activities washing, conflicts of curiosity, and holding an occasion in a rustic that Amnesty Worldwide and the U.S. Division of State say falls effectively beneath common requirements of human rights, the standard and success of the EWC can also be open to query. Essentially the most considered occasion was League of Legends, partially as a result of the preferred esports workforce on this planet, T1, have been competing in the preferred esports on this planet, and have been the victors. Past that, viewership was nothing to put in writing house about, comparable and sometimes decrease than Majors for different occasions. The crowds have been criticized as anemic, the manufacturing lackluster, and total was an underwhelming occasion.
Past this, for the reason that EWC was partnered with most metric corporations, together with Esports Charts, the integrity of the reported numbers is questionable at greatest. That’s earlier than the allegations of botting and embed stream shenanigans. Total, it’s a tragic indictment of the place esports is in its evolution. And it appears to be like like we’re in for this canine and pony present yearly for the foreseeable future. Esports want to separate itself from conventional sports activities has typically manifested by ignoring classes that sports activities has realized the exhausting manner. Whereas occasions just like the Olympics and the World Cup, the Euros and Copa America, and many others., restrain themselves to as soon as each 4 years, the EWC is about to happen, every year, each summer time, for eternity, presumably.
In 2025, the occasion is about to run for even longer!!! As if two months plus qualifiers and taking up the complete summer time wasn’t sufficient. This 12 months with the EWC happening, I took the chance to spend a lot of the summer time months travelling, going to music festivals, visiting new locations, and usually avoiding what was a essentially disappointing and uninteresting event. Subsequent 12 months, I’ll positively be doing the identical.
Workforce Falcons Take The Stage
Picture Credit score: EWC
Whereas Workforce Falcons was based in 2017, it’s secure to say that 2024 was actually their debut 12 months within the wider world of esports. From the top of 2023 onwards, the group began signing rosters left and proper. October 2023 say then signal a CS2 roster, November the a Dota 2 workforce. In February and March they added Overwatch, Rainbow Six and Rocket League, and an Apex Roster in Might.
By the point the EWC kicked off the workforce already had dozens of titles beneath its identify, and having entered all however one of many occasions, claimed the membership championship. Whereas they’ve been constructing tremendous groups, their effectiveness has been questionable. Dota 2 must be their most profitable endeavor, the place the workforce has taken first place in 9 of the 16 prime tier occasions it’s taken half in since their founding. However the wheels have began to return off for Falcons on the shut of 2024. Lacking out on what would have been their crowning achievement of profitable TI13, and falling to safe first or second place on the EWC’s Riyadh Masters 2024 have been vital stumbling factors which have continued into the top of the 12 months.
Exterior of Dota, Workforce Falcons has struggled to be the tremendous groups they have been lauded as. The CS workforce has struggled to interrupt onto the rostrum at S-Tier occasions, and even the groups picked up specifically for the Esports World Cup, not many managed to interrupt into the best echelons. The group hasn’t absolutely downsized but, however with outcomes falling throughout the board, maybe Falcons’ technique will change for 2025.
T1 and Faker Win Once more
Picture Credit score: Riot Video games
One other League of Legends Worlds occasion, one other trophy for Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok and T1. After claiming victory within the aforementioned EWC, T1 truly struggled to qualify for Worlds 2024, such was the competitors from in-region rivals. However the Unkillable Demon King as soon as once more was capable of carry out a miracle, claiming victory for T1, South Korea, and, maybe most surprisingly, Carl Martin Erik “Rekkles” Larsson, TI1’s stunning substitute participant.
The semi-regular T1 victory lap has change into one thing of a meme, because the participant that may convincingly be known as esports best of all time has taken his part-owned workforce to LoL’s highest ranges of success for the fifth time.
Past simply being a momentous private and workforce achievement, T1’s common journeys to Worlds grand finals can also be an important a part of League of Legends’ success as the preferred esport on this planet. The occasion peaked at nearly 7 million viewers in the course of the finals (not together with Chinese language viewership) making it essentially the most considered esports occasion of all time. Worlds 2024’s peak viewership of 6.94 million was competing in opposition to Worlds 2023’s viewership of 6.4 million, leaping half 1,000,000 within the area of a 12 months.
As compared, Worlds 2022’s last which featured T1 shedding solely simply broke 5.1 million peak viewers, and Worlds 2021, which, unforgivably, didn’t function T1 within the finals, had simply 4.01 million peak viewers. Whereas clearly the general viewership is trending upwards, and it’s exhausting to say how Faker and T1’s presence boosts the quantity, it actually helps, when T1’s followers are a number of the most vocal, outspoken, passionate, and at occasions, delusional and poisonous, round.
Hero Shooters Got here Again! (Sorta)
Picture Credit score: NetEase
If there’s one factor nobody had on their 2024 bingo card it was the revival of Hero Shooters. After the catastrophe that was Overwatch 2, and the shutdown of rivals like Battleborn and Paladins, it could have been a good evaluation to say that the style was lifeless. Even the reception to the trailer for Harmony – upon the reveal that it was a hero shooter – spelled doom (though we’ll come again to Harmony…).
Then in Might, rumors started to swirl of an unreleased Hero Shooter by CS and Dota 2 developer Valve, known as Impasse. This was a 6v6 Hero Shooter that used a MOBA-like ma, with the Valve degree of high quality. The sport’s rise since then has been prodigious. The FOMO issue – the sport may solely be performed by invite from somebody who had the sport or in case you have been invited as a tester by Valve straight – meant that on the finish of September the sport ballooned to nearly 200,000 gamers with out even being formally launched.
However this was only a Valve factor, proper? Hero Shooters are nonetheless lifeless within the water. That’s what standard knowledge would inform you when Harmony launched in August. It was instantly panned and struggled to get quite a lot of thousand gamers. In September, simply as Impasse was reaching its peak, Harmony was pulled from sale, and finally, the sport was shuttered and the servers turned off.
Besides in December, Marvel Rivals, a Marvel-IP impressed hero shooter, has taken the world by storm. It’s enjoyable, it’s standard, and nobody appears to care in regards to the pores and skin gross sales and the very fact it’s mainly simply Overwatch with Wolverine.
It’s a complicated consequence. Is the reply to make your sport free like Impasse and Marvel Rivals? Harmony had a price ticket that made it nearly an insane funding for the playerbase. However Overwatch 2 was free and that sport has been slowly dying for 2 years now. Is it the aggressive scene? The general public notion of the developer and sport? It’s exhausting to say. Regardless of the method is, Impasse and Marvel Rivals have it, OW2 and Harmony do now.
Adjustments and Wanting Foward
In 2024, for the primary time in a number of years, esports financial prospects look like trying up. Or at the very least that’s what folks have satisfied themselves. There are indicators that there’s a shift. With cash flowing in from the Saudi PIF and more cash than ever from betting sponsors, there’s a way that in contrast to the enterprise capitalists that got here earlier than, this wave of funding is a little more secure.
Past that, there’s been concessions from a few of esports largest publishers. Riot Video games, for instance, only in the near past made a daring resolution to permit its League of Legends and VALORANT groups to be sponsored by betting corporations – a crimson line for them prior to now.
Evidently esports’ generally contentious relationship to betting sponsors has matured considerably in 2024 – though whether or not this can be a case of it being worn down over time, or a basic reconsideration stays to be seen. Nevertheless, the business has an extended strategy to go by way of checks and balances and avoiding conflicts of curiosity. We’re in a world the place groups are owned and sponsored by betting corporations who then market bets on those self same groups throughout occasions they often sponsor. It’s rife for corruption. Nonetheless, for as soon as, it seems there’s some cash flowing. Even when it comes with some caveats.
In 2025, esports will discover itself having to make some troublesome choices about these sponsors and the way far it’s prepared to go. Or, extra possible, it gained’t make these choices till it’s far too late.
