AGORACOM Small-cap Investor Relations Blog

Team Method: Triforce compete with Team Grmbl at World of WarCraft at BlizzCon 2017. BlizzCon is the site of the Overwatch World Cup 2017 eSports tournament. (Joe Scarnici/Getty Images)

Revenue from eSports — or competitive video gaming – will grow to $700m in 2017, a 41.3% increase from 2016 , according to Newzoo research. The industry is forecast to reach $1.5 billion by 2020. Major investors, high-profile celebrities, big-brand sponsors and major tech companies are banking on eSports’ profitable trajectory.

DreamTeam

Study shows the Esports market has tremendous untapped potential

Blockchain-powered solutions are the latest trend to shake up transactions and data for the entire sector. To gamers, blockchains and digital currencies are nothing new, and this attitude enables the industry to adopt new technologies faster than other industries like banking or logistics. Part of that has to do with age. According to Newzoo‘s 2017 Global Esports Market Report, electronic gaming entertains a young and marketable demographic: Millennials. More than half of eSports enthusiasts globally are aged between 21 and 35, and they are often early adopters of technology, including blockchain.

Blockchain applications across eSports

Startups are leveraging the benefits of blockchain to deploy smart contracts, fuel betting, host tournaments, and ease the purchase virtual assets, all of which help grow the eSports ecosystem. Much has been written about blockchain startups tackling eSports betting and the purchasing or trading of skins (cosmetic items), but another important application is how this technology can help amateur gamers on their pathway to going pro though both tournament and team building platforms.

Guests demo the new World of WarCraft game at BlizzCon 2017 at Anaheim California Convention Center (Joe Scarnici/Getty Images)

Tournaments are a way of life for avid eSports gamers and online gaming platforms that have embraced blockchain are seeing the pay-off. FirstBlood, an eSports platform created on the Ethereum blockchain, decentralizes tournament setup and winnings distribution. It allows players to test their skills and to bet on games without being dependent on traditional money transfers, financial regulations and middleman corruption. With FirstBlood, players can game solo or with a team in order to improve their skill through games in a competitive environment. Other blockchain companies including Gilgam.es and EloPlay have entered the tournament space as well.

From amateur gamers to going pro 

While fostering a tournament environment can help players sharpen their skills, we believe there is an opportunity to take this one step further, by lessening the barrier of entry when it comes to building and managing teams.

DreamTeam

Majority of top competitive game titles are team-based

There are 1.4 billion registered gamers, and most of those players are concentrated around the most competitive eSports titles that include LoL, CS:GO, Dota2 and Overwatch.  One of the most loved esports titles, League of Legends, has 250 million players players who want to build, grow and manage their teams, but there are only 100 League of Legends clubs worldwide. Let’s compare that to football, a traditional sport, with more than 300 million players globally, with around 300,000 clubs. This discrepancy of players to clubs was the catalyst for our company, DreamTeam, to develop a dynamic platform to solve this problem.

Building teams to advance 

DreamTeam takes blockchain-powered tournaments one step further by creating a recruitment and management platform for amateur, novice, and pro teams. Blockchain-based smart contracts ensure contractual financial relations for all users without participation of third parties. One function of DreamTeam is to aid the development of small tournaments and secure payments. On the DreamTeam platform, when a team that participates in a tournament gets a winning place, the prize money automatically transfers to their account according to predefined rules (the data is taken from game API’s — application program interface and oracles, or a service that verifies the data independently). All players receive their share of the prize money without issues or delay. This is just one aspect; we envision the platform developing into a multi-billion dollar ecosystem built upon media right sales, sponsorships, players salaries, and prize money.

People watch the World Championships Final of League of Legends at the National Stadium ‘Bird’s Nest’ in Beijing, the national stadium built for the 2008 Olympic Games. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Blockchain has the potential to revolutionize a wide variety of industries, but with eSports’ audience made up of younger, tech savvy individuals, blockchain is more easily embraced. Every corner of eSports is ripe for rethinking. Aiding amateur gamers through team building and tournaments is only the beginning.