‘A big year for e-sports’: Gamers descend on Sydney for IEM
Gamers from around Australia and overseas converged on Sydney earlier this week with millions of dollars at stake. It’s good work if you can get it.
Gamers from around Australia and overseas converged on Sydney earlier this week as part of an international competitive video gaming tournament that is rapidly shaping up as one of the country’s top e-sports events.
The Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) event was held from April 30-May 5 at Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney, drawing thousands of spectators to the stadium and millions more watching online.
Sixteen teams, including three from Australia, took to the stage, with players from the USA, UK, Brazil, Holland and Sweden among those duking it out to be the best at first-person shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive — and for some of the $US250,000 ($A358,000) prize pool offered by ESL, the facilitating e-sports league organisation.
In a strongly contested grand final, US team Liquid defeated Swedish team Fnatic 3-2 in a best of five match scenario, collecting a $US100,000 ($A143,000) prize in the process, while a show match between Australia and the UK — dubbed “The Caches” — was held before the grand final, with Team Australia beating the UK.
For the first time, first-person shooter Overwatch was included in the line-up as part of the Overwatch Contenders season 1 finals, with Melbourne-based team Order defeating the Sydney Drop Bears to take out the top spot and secure a berth for the Overwatch Pacific Showdown in Shanghai later this month.
It is the third year the IEM has been held in Sydney, and Intel’s e-sports business development strategist Brittany Williams said IEM continued to get bigger and bigger — with this year being no exception.
It’s understood there were about 8000 visitors each day, with up to 260,000 concurrent viewers streaming the event online at one point, with a total viewership exceeding last year and likely to be somewhere in the region of 15 million viewers.
Ms Williams said while the official figures for this year’s event were still being finalised, there was a significant jump in figures from the first year of IEM Sydney to the second.
“In addition to the number of fans increasing from 7000 to 7500 visitors each day, online viewership jumped from eight million unique viewers in year one to 13.5 million in year two. That’s a significant increase, so it will be interesting to see how it pans out this year,” she said.
“Last year, 7500 people attended each day, an increase of 10 per cent on year one, with over 13.5 million people tuning in to watch online, a 40 per cent increase from year one. Final figures for 2019 are yet to be confirmed, but we expect the in-person and online audience would have grown again.”
Ms Williams said this year’s IEM Sydney was the biggest global e-sports tournament ever held in Australia, and the energy around the event continued to grow every year.
“It’s exciting to see how passionate the Aussie crowds are about e-sports and how they are helping solidify Australia’s presence in e-sports,” she said.
“With all the buzz, we’ve also seen growing support from the tech and gaming industry for this event, with more and more of our channel partners getting involved.”
E-sports may not have the same mainstream recognition in Australia as traditional sports such as rugby, cricket or netball, but they are becoming hugely popular overseas — it’s only half joking to say the computer game Starcraft II is one of South Korea’s national sports, while a number of universities in the USA offer scholarships for e-sports, as does the Queensland University of Technology here in Australia.
There is big money involved in competitive gaming too — the Six Invitational (World Championships for Rainbow Six: Siege) in Montreal earlier this year had a prize pool of more than $US2 million ($A2.9 million), and BlizzCon 2018 in Los Angeles had a prize pool of $US2.5 million ($A3.6 million) across several games, while the 2018 International Championships for Defence Of The Ancients 2, held in Vancouver, had a prize pool of a staggering $US25.5 million ($A36.5) million.
“This year is a big year for e-sports,” Ms Williams said.
“The global e-sports market will exceed the billion-dollar revenue mark, reaching an impressive $US1.1 billion ($A1.6 billion), and the global e-sports audience is set to hit 453.8 million.”
Ms Williams said she thought IEM Sydney had become such a success because of the worldwide recognition e-sports had gained.
“Like any other sport, fans love the competition and love seeing their favourite sport being played at the highest, most competitive level,” she said.
“IEM Sydney is a vibrant event that we’re really proud of. The atmosphere is incredible and ESL, our event partner, has a fantastic track record of organising competitions.
“These events bring the community together and are backed by a passionate fan base that continues to grow. Plus the game (Counter-Strike: Global Offensive) is easy to follow and can be watched at any time of the day through online-streaming services such as Twitch, so you have an even broader reach with viewers from around the world tuning in to watch every day.”
Originally published as ‘A big year for e-sports’: Gamers descend on Sydney for IEM
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