# Market Overview
# Headlines
• Esports is a segment of the wider $152B video game industry that is based on competitive, organised gaming. While there is a broader demographic present within the 2.5B gamers of the world, esports has a Generation Z and Millennial-dominated global audience of over 450 million people and is on track to reach $1.1B of revenue for the first time this year.
• Despite the huge disparity in revenue and audience, the video game industry's hiring market is only around five times the size of the esports hiring market in terms of number of unique job opportunities available.
• While both video games and esports are growing, the latter is growing at a rate of 26.7% annually compared to 9.6% annually. This is largely because more and more companies from outside of esports are entering the space in affiliate and partnership deals, which is driving revenue and leading to the creation of more and more jobs. Manchester City Football Club and Louis Vuitton are two of the latest.
• While there is no existing example of a jobs website being hugely successful in this space, there are a number of examples of niche jobs sites in other industries becoming extremely profitable. TeamWork Online from traditional sports is the most similar to Hitmarker in this respect.
# What is esports?
Esports is the world of competitive, organised video gaming.
Professional gamers are typically contracted to teams (franchises) who pay them a salary to travel the globe and compete in tournaments on games such as Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, Dota 2, Fortnite, League of Legends, and Overwatch.
Most of these tournaments occur over weekends and offer prize pools of $1M+ to the best placing individuals and teams. Recently there have even been prize pools in excess of $30M in Dota 2 and Fortnite.
# How big is the opportunity for Hitmarker?
Research company Newzoo states that there are now 2.5B gamers in the world and the video game industry is on track to generate $152.1B of revenue this year, an annual growth of 9.6%. By 2021 the industry is expected to generate $178.2B, a further increase of 17.9% over the next two years.
Newzoo also states that the global esports audience will be in excess of 450 million people by the end of this year, up 15% from 2018. By 2021 the audience is expected to number 557 million people, which is a further increase of 23.8% over the next two years.
Goldman Sachs estimates that annual esports revenue will surpass the $1B mark for the first time this year, up 26.7% from 2018. By 2021 annual revenue is expected to reach $1.65B, which is a further increase of 50% over the next two years.
Esports isn’t going away. The Pew Research Center recently reported that 97% of teenage boys and 83% of teenage girls in the US now play video games, and KidsInsights found that esports is now the second most popular activity that boys in the UK watch on a screen.
# What are the current trends in the space?
As the overall revenue potential of esports grows, significant investments into the scene are increasing the number of job opportunities available and the overall professionalism of the industry.
We believe that non-endemic entrants to the space, in particular, are in need of an industry-specific hiring solution as they attempt to build their teams with people who have expert esports knowledge.
People having bad experiences in the esports hiring process is also a big demand driver for our service. Hitmarker offers an element of control over the jobs posted and scrutiny of said jobs, which is not often found on social media, or even with the larger recruitment websites.
# Has anything like this been successful before in esports?
Not in esports, yet, but TeamWork Online is a fine example from traditional sports.
The company was founded in 1987 and was the first to focus on executive search for sporting institutions. It achieved its 100,000th digital hire in 2016 and grew its annual revenue 700% between 2009 and 2016.
By 2013 it was already posting annual revenues in the seven figures range, and as of this year is thought to be comfortably into mid seven figure territory.